They're Made Out of Meat

Prior to today, I had never heard of the author Terry Bisson. I heard this dramatization of his short story "They're Made Out of Meat" at the end of Studio 360 today, and I found it hilarious and poignant. It's certainly piqued my interest in his catalog.

Family Matters

Jeff Sharlet's book The Family is an eye-opening look inside of the secretive fundamentalist Christian organization of the same name that has intertwined itself with American power over the past 70 years, but I found the book more useful as a look inside of American Christian fundamentalism in general.

The book begins with a brief introduction to religious revival in American history before telling the story of Abraham Vereide, the founder of The Family. This section seemed a bit perfunctory and didn't really add much to the story other than establishing that American history is full of religious fervor and innovation, something that I assume anyone who picks up this book already knows.

The origins of The Family lie in the labor unrest of the Great Depression. The first of many tautologies upon which the faith of The Family and American fundamentalist Christianity rests is introduced when Vereide outlines his plan for labor-management conflict resolution. The idea is that the men in positions of power were put there by God. As long as they act in accordance with God's will, strife will disappear - and if it doesn't, it's clearly the fault of those who are resisting the will of the almighty.

The Family really got going during the Cold War. Their fundamentalism proved to be remarkably ecumenical in its search for proxies to use in the struggle against the Soviet Union and godless communism. Former Nazis and even Indonesia's murderous dictator Suharto and Somalia's Siad Barre (both Muslims) were all courted by The Family. It's no secret that the US has formed and continues to form alliances with some less than savory heads of state. The fact that fundamentalist Christianity has been used to sell national security imperatives is not all that shocking. Most shocking is how completely The Family has been able to install their narrative into the minds of politicians and citizens of all ideological stripes, not just their natural allies on the religious and authoritarian right.

Populist fundamentalism, the religion of megachurches, TV evangelists, and the common man and woman, and how it relates to and interacts with the elite fundamentalism of The Family is covered in the final chapters of the book. The elite fundamentalism of The Family is so stripped of anything that I recognize as Christianity that it does not feel cynical to conclude that its primarily mission is to exploit American civic religious traditions in order to consolidate power both at home and abroad. While I don't agree with their beliefs, I understand their lust for power. While this book taught me a lot about populist fundamentalism, I still have no idea what drives people into its embrace.

In some ways, my life experience has made me perfectly incapable of understanding this faith. I'm a secular liberal who was raised in the Catholic church. Had I not been exposed to any Christian faith tradition, I would probably only find populist fundamentalism strange instead of strange and contradictory. Contradiction may be at the heart of all religions, but it's the lifeblood of populist fundamentalism. The faith described in this book is like a game a Jeopardy! where the question for every answer is 'Who is Jesus?'. The contortions of mind that need to be maintained in order to preserve this constraint are baffling and have given rise to whole systems of knowledge, such as intelligent design, that provide revisionist explanations couched in the language of modernity for anything that threatens to undermine this axiom.

Other than showing that fundamentalism is here to stay, Sharlet doesn't speculate on what the future holds. This is wise on his part, though it's always fun to look into the future and to look back at the prognosticators of the past to see how wrong (or right) they were. The Family is an important book and well worth reading, even if you think you already understand the links between politics and religion in America.

Reading Exercises

I've never understood why people bring reading material with them to the gym. I certainly can't concentrate on reading under even moderate levels of physical exertion. Ever more puzzling is people who read books while exercising, since you really need two hands free to read a book, which eliminates pretty much all gym equipment except for exercise bikes, seated leg machines, and really slow treadmill walking. One of the bookworms I noticed at the gym today was a guy who was reading a book called Fraternity Gang Rape. With a title that provocative, I was hoping that it was from the true crime genre and not the how-to section, but it turns out that it's a semi-scholarly text on this disturbing phenomenon. I'm all for literacy and reading things that address uncomfortable issues, but this has got to be one of the stranger gym reads out there.

Nasty, Brutish, and Short

I recently finished reading George Saunders' The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil. I actually read it twice, once over the span of a couple of weeks and again on a flight (it's only about 130 pages long, some of which are illustrations).

It's hard to not read the story as an allegorical critique of American foreign policy. The first time I read the story, that's about all I got out of it and I found it rather obvious and dull. The second time I read the story, I was able to put politics aside and get into the story on a more personal level. More of Saunders' trademark wit and absurdity came through when I spent more time focusing on the characters (a bizarre assortment of humanoid robots) than trying to match each one to an historical figure (the book's jacket does it no favors by proclaiming it "an Animal Farm for our times").

I was disappointed by the ending at first, but after reading it again, I found it incredibly poignant. In Persuasion Nation, a collection of short stories, is the only other work of Saunders that I've read. What impressed me most about that book was how he was able to make such witty, insightful, and devastating observations about humanity in a handful of paragraphs. The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, while short, is not a short story, but the ending really demonstrates Saunders' ability to cover a lot of ground in a few pages though his efficient but memorable use of prose.

Where Men Win Glory

I received a copy of Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer's latest book, and I read the whole thing in a single day while traveling back home from the southwest. The book chronicles the life and death of Pat Tillman, the iconoclastic professional football player who enlisted in the Army shortly after 9/11 and whose death by friendly fire in 2004 was shamefully covered up by the military. The book isn't just about Tillman, it's also one of the best analyses of America's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq that I've ever read. I never paid as much attention to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as I should have, largely because I became so disillusioned by the Bush administration's mismanagement of them. Of course, the Bush administration is gone and the wars aren't over, so I don't have any excuses now. It's only been a week or so, but I have been paying much closer attention to the news from Iraq and Afghanistan than I was before reading this book. I'm not sure if Krakauer could have covered the wars in real-time as well as he did in this book, but more insightful press coverage certainly would have been nice in the earlier days of the wars.

There wasn't a lot of new information about Tillman in this book, but it did include excerpts from various journals that he kept during most of his adult life. The book focuses on Tillman's dual natures, how he was both an extroverted elite athlete turned soldier as well as an introspective intellectual war critic. When I first learned about Tillman after his death, he immediately struck me as someone who would have been vilified by many of the people who were holding him up as a war hero had they actually known him due to his unconventional and outspoken nature. After reading the book, I get the feeling that hating Pat Tillman would be nearly impossible for all but the most myopic partisans.

Bad Goys

I just finished reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union, and I can honestly say that it has changed my life. Not because it's a great book, because I really didn't enjoy it that much. I just couldn't really get into it. For one, I'm not a huge fan of murder mysteries. I enjoyed the dialog and I didn't really find the Chabon's use of Yiddish too distracting, I just felt that the story never really developed enough momentum. The story is organized into relatively short chapters that all end with a punchy one-liner, which was amusing at first, but by the end, it started to feel like Chabon was putting more effort into his chapter endings than the overall plot.

So how did this slightly above average alternate history murder mystery change my life? For one, it's made me finally realize that there's no point in trying to read a novel if I'm not going to be able to be able to finish it in 2-3 weeks. I lose too much of the story if I try and read a novel 10 pages at a time. The other thing it has made me realize is that it's better to seek out books that I really want to read instead of reading whatever happens to fall in my lap. I've been meaning to read Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for a long time, but every time I look for it at the library, it's checked out. I don't tend to buy a lot of new books, and while you can often find gems at the used book stores that I love so much, you're unlikely to find specific titles. I picked up Yiddish Policemen's Union from the remaindered rack at Barnes & Noble, which can also occasionally yield gems, but if you take the money I've wasted on second-rate discount titles over the years, I could have bought a small library of decent books instead. Or better yet, I could just request the titles that I'm interested in from the library and read them free of charge.

One final note, according to this article from last year, the Coen brothers are working on a film adaptation of The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

Mr. PC

I recently finished reading More Information Than You Require, the second volume in John Hodgman's three-volume almanac of made-up facts. Was I unwise to start with this volume instead of going back and reading the first book? I don't really think it matters, and I've read enough of The Areas of My Expertise in bookstores to know what I was getting into.

The genius of Hodgman's books is that he doesn't just make up things for the sake of being absurd. There's a kernel of truth at the center of all good jokes and while everything nearly Hodgman describes in his books is not true, much of it is rooted in the truth.

After an outstanding start that includes a listing of all US Presidents and important details about their lives (including whether or not they had a hook for a hand), More Information Than You Require starts to drag early in the second half when Hodgman gets stuck talking about how he fell ass-backwards into fame on the success of his first book and the subsequent acting roles to which it led. It's written in a fish-out-of-water tone, but he goes on and on about it for so long that I'm not sure if all of the fame has gone to his head or he's impersonating a writer who stumbled into fame and let it go to his head.

Once he gets off that digression, the book has its moments, but it never really recovers. I was looking forward to the chapter on mole-men, but it wasn't very funny or poignant. The list of 700 mole-man names was tedious reeked of the self-indulgence of the earlier chapters about Hodgman's life as a minor celebrity.

I should go back and read The Areas of My Expertise someday, since it was written before Hodgman became a minor celebrity and probably doesn't have as many digressions into his personal life, but I'm not going to rush out to pick up volume three whenever it arrives.

People Who Eat People (Are the Luckiest People in the World)

I just finished reading Max Brooks' World War Z. It's not the kind of book that I would usually read, but I decided to give it a shot on the recommendation of my brother-in-law-in-law. It's an easy read, but it didn't do a lot for me. It's set in the not-too-distant future and chronicles the zombie war though interviews with the people who survived it.

The zombie myth is so pervasive and well-understood in modern culture that this book doesn't really need to spend much time explaining what zombies are and how they work, though I found the way that Brooks delicately examined nearly every tactical aspect of what a war against the undead would look like one of the most compelling parts of the story. I did a little research of my own after reading the book, and I was surprised to learn how modern the zombie myth is. While it's origins are somewhat unclear, it's likely derived from Haitian Vodou and was introduced into popular culture almost single-handedly by the films of George Romero.

In film and literature, zombies are generally used stand-ins for the fears that are gnawing at society at the time. I'm not sure what, if anything, the zombies are supposed to represent in this book. The war on terror is an obvious choice. I think Brooks leaves the story loose enough to allow the reader to provide his own stand-in.

Brooks applies the same precision to the geopolitical aspects of World War Z that he does to the technical aspects of zombie combat, and that's where the book really falls short. I found the politics of the story far too predictable. The nations that fared best in the war were, for the most part, fortress societies. Nations with authoritarian streaks used the war to consolidate their power. Without going into too much detail, the chapters dealing with wartime Japan were so stereotyped that it almost read like a pamphlet written by far-right Japanese nationalists as a cautionary call to arms. Brooks definitely did his homework, but there's a real lack of imagination in the geopolitical parts of the story.

I generally avoid stories built around dialogue because it's really hard to write compelling dialogue. World War Z is far from the worst book I've ever read in this department, but the dialogue isn't great. Since it's written in interview form, there really isn't any time to do much character development.

I hear that the book is being made into a movie. I think it could be pretty good as a film, especially if they can whittle the story down to a few compelling characters.

Medieval Times

I recently finished reading a couple of books that wound up complimenting each other pretty well. The first was Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered. I wanted to read a book about the middle ages and this one seemed well received. It's short and a quick read, but I didn't find it very enlightening. Part of the problem is that a lot of the book is dedicated to examining archaeological records, which can get really dry. My main problem with the book, however, is the author's assertion that the people of the middle ages shouldn't be considered less civilized than the Romans even though they were largely illiterate and their architectural, artistic, and engineering accomplishments paled in comparison to the Romans. I agree that these so-called barbarians have gotten something of a bad rap; their more civilized contemporaries and even their modern descendants were and are all to willing to commit acts of great brutality when it suits their purposes. That doesn't absolve them of their barbaric behavior, nor does it change the fact that they failed to achieve the level of sophistication of the Romans.

The second book, A Short History of Byzantium, is a condensed version of John Julius Norwich's three volume history of the Byzantine Empire. It covers the entire history of the Byzantine Empire, so it starts in roughly the same time period as the first book but continues all the way to the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century. It's a narrative, not an academic history, and Norwich is prone to making sensational statements without providing any real justification, but it's an interesting read. My only real complaint is that the condensed version goes for breadth instead of depth. It mentions ever single monarch to sit on the throne in Constantinople. Some of the lesser emperors only got a couple pages and the greats only got a chapter. It was difficult to follow all of the names as a casual reader. One of the few things that I remembered about the Byzantine Empire from history class was the great schism of 1054, so I naturally assumed it was a big deal. I was surprised to learn that it wasn't much different than one of the many previous doctrinal disputes between Rome and Constantinople. It's tempting to look at moments in history as sharp dividing lines where nothing in the world after that moment is the same as it was prior to it, but that's generally not how things happen.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

I finally finished reading Infinite Jest. I picked it up for the first time nearly eight years ago but didn't make it very far. I bought a copy nearly seven years ago and made it about a quarter of the way through before giving up again. I finally decided to give it a third try this past September, shortly after the death of its author, David Foster Wallace. I'm not afraid to stop reading a book that I no longer find interesting, so the fact that I made it through all 981 pages (and 97 pages of footnotes) means that it at least held my interest. It's an entertaining story filled with some of the most intriguing characters that I've ever encountered in literature. While I definitely enjoyed the book on a superficial level, especially in the middle portion where most of the characters had been developed but before it became clear that the story was not going to resolve itself in the end, I never really figured out what the story is actually about. After reading the book, the blurbs on the back cover sound plausible, but I certainly wouldn't have arrived at any of those conclusions on my own. I'm sure a lot of this my on fault; I probably should have been reading the book with a dictionary in hand since it had a lot of words I've never heard or seen in print (not to mention quite a bit of Québécois), and I ideally should have tried to finish it in less than four months since it's pretty hard to keep a story fresh in your mind spreading it out over such a long time. So while I agree with the pull quote from the Seattle Times on the front cover of my copy that proclaims Infinite Jest to be "surprisingly readable", don't kid yourself into thinking that you're going to get a lot out of this book without really committing to a serious study of it.

Working Studs

I'll always remember my introduction to the works of the late Studs Terkel, who passed away yesterday at the age of 96. I was in sixth grade and browsing the stacks at my middle school library when I noticed a book called "Working Studs". Needless to say, I was surprised to see such a subversive work of non-fiction at a middle school library until I took a second look and discovered that it was the classic "Working" by Studs Terkel. This remembrance of Terkel, which aired on NPR yesterday, includes Terkel recounting a time that one of Jerry Falwell's minions called a library in Georgia to complain about a pornographic book called "Working Studs" by someone named Terkel. I guess I had the potential to be a great moralizing ignoramus from a young age. If only someone would have recognized that and nurtured me down that path.

I've never read "Working" (or "Working Studs", for that matter), though I did read this book during a lapse in employment several years ago. It's written in the same style as Working and bills itself as something of a modern day remake of the classic. I gave Michelle a copy of "Working" for Christmas last year, so I'm sure I'll get around to reading it once the statute of limitations on reclaiming a gift that you gave someone else expires and/or I ever finish "Infinite Jest".

Men of Tomorrow

I just finished reading Men of Tomorrow, a book about the birth of the comic book industry. As usual, I stumbled upon it while wandering aimlessly though the library, though I do remember hearing good things about the book when it came out and may have even given it to a friend as a Christmas gift a few years back. While I found some of the writing a bit labored, the book presents a ton of information in a well-organized and coherent way. You don't need to be a comic book enthusiast (or former enthusiast) to enjoy the book, but it certainly would help. Still, there's enough really interesting stuff about the socioeconomic history of comics, especially in the first half of the book, to appeal to anyone who is interested in the history of mass media, business, entertainment, labor, or politics.

Collective Bargaining

If nothing else, the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics sure featured a lot of people. At the time, I joked that it was simply due to China's huge population; they have so many people that every square inch of space is occupied. My second, slightly less lame take on that joke was that it was an immense make-work project. Anyone who has ever visited China should know what I mean; transactions that usually only require a single salesperson in US seem to require two or three in China. Leave it to David Brooks to see something more sinister at work. He sees the opening ceremony as a collectivist challenge to the individualism of the west. Whether or not he saw the same threat to western values during the opening ceremonies of the 1998 Nagano Olympics, the 1972 Sapporo Olympics, or the 1964 Tokyo games, all of which took place in Japan, a country with a culture that is much more suspicious of individuality than China, he doesn't say. I suspect that you getting a better insight into what he's thinking if you replace collectivism with another -ism beginning with c, but that also doesn't really work since China wouldn't be hosting the Olympics right now if they hadn't decided to start ditching most of their communist economic system 30 years ago.

This piece, along with this rebuttal from The Economist, tie in well with the book that I just finished reading, Edward O. Wilson's On Human Nature. Wilson's thesis echoes The Economist's view that humans across all cultures generally act in their own best interest. Furthermore, Wilson argues that there is a common genetic basis that constrains the full range of human social behavior and that cultures can change quickly under the right conditions and humans can quickly adapt to different cultures. In fact, two of the examples that he used to demonstrate humanity's cultural flexibility involved Chinese immigrant populations in Jamaica and Guyana.

On Human Nature is as heavy as its title implies, but it was still a fascinating read. Had I had the proper amount of time to dedicate to it, I certainly could have read it from cover to cover in one sitting. The book is now 30 years old, but as far as I can tell, still incredibly relevant. I picked this book up because my interest in evolution and evolutionary psychology has been sparked over the past few years by all of the intelligent design nonsense that's been in the news. It has certainly motivated me to learn more about science in general and evolution in particular and I hope that it's had a similar effect on others.

The Horror

I recently picked up Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I'm not entirely sure why I decided to read it, other than it's one of many notable works of literature that I've never read. I went to the library looking for a work of fiction, but beyond that, I didn't really have anything in mind. I enjoyed the book, but I had a few problems with it. The first was that I picked up the Norton Critical Edition, which clocks in at 420 pages. The story itself is only 70 of those pages. I failed to consult the table of contents before diving into it, so I thought that it was a novel-length story. I tend to read longer stories differently than shorter ones. I don't pay attention as closely at the start of a longer story since I figure that the first 20 or 30 pages are just going to start developing the themes and characters that will be fully fleshed out throughout the course of the book. Once I was 20 or 30 pages into Heart of Darkness, I was almost halfway through the story. I didn't realize how short the story was until I was about 2/3rds of the way through it, at which point, I had no desire to go back to the beginning and read it more closely.

My bigger problem was the extent to which the story has been woven into western culture over the past 100 years. It's hard to approach a work of literature from a fresh perspective after you've already seen it parodied on Seinfeld. While I didn't read much of the source material, criticism, and historical information presented in the other 350 pages of the Norton Critical Edition, that which I did read was in some ways more interesting to me than the story. I'd still say that the story is required reading for any student of the scramble for Africa.

The Ice Harvest

After hearing about Gavin Weightman's The Frozen-Water Trade: A True Story shortly after it was published in 2003 and having my interest rekindled after noticing a small sign on an old warehouse in Charlestown commemorating the frozen water trade while walking the Freedom Trail in 2006, I finally got around to reading the book. The book is largely the story of Frederic Tudor, the man who was largely responsible for creating the ice industry prior to artificial refrigeration. Before I heard about this book, I had no idea that people ever harvested ice from lakes and rivers and stored it so it would be available during the warmer months. I had heard of icehouses and iceboxes but I guess I never really thought about where the ice came from. When I learned that Tudor shipped ice to the Caribbean, the American South, and even to India without artificial refrigeration, I was astounded and it was that astonishment that led to my interest in the book.

Once I was able to wrap my head around the idea that the ice trade, the book didn't really have much else to offer in the way of shocking realizations. The book devoted some space to one of Tudor's partners, Nathaniel Wyeth, who was responsible for most of the technical innovations that made it possible to harvest large volumes of ice from frozen lakes and ponds in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Once that was worked out, the ice business was like any other weather-dependent business. Tudor exploited the technical advantages that Wyeth provided to harvest more ice in less time at a lower cost than his competitors, but in the end, his success had more to do with the network of relationships he built around the world and his refusal to cede any ground to his competitors.

The most interesting thing about the whole story was not the supply side of the ice business; it was the demand side. The US was the first country where year-round access to ice in all climates was considered a necessity instead of an extravagant luxury. While there certainly was demand for ice in the tropical climes of the Caribbean and India, ice was still seen as more of a luxury good. Even today, American's attitudes towards ice differ from the rest of the world. Sit down at a restaurant anywhere in the 50 states and the first thing that you'll get is a tall, cool glass of ice water. American brewers have spent so much time and money trying to convince customers that their beer is the coldest that it's become the stuff of parody. The books doesn't offer any explanation for American's love of ice. It might be good old American exceptionalism, but I have my own theory. The climate of the eastern part of North America is a lot more variable than that of Western Europe. The average temperature in Philadelphia during the summer is about the same as the average temperature in Rome during the summer, but Philadelphia gets much colder in the winter. There's really nowhere in the eastern US that has comfortable weather throughout the winter and the summer, so it makes sense that in addition to the obvious demand for summer ice in sweltering American South there would also be more demand for summer ice in Northeastern US cities than anywhere in Western Europe.

Feast or Famine

In preparation for our trip to London last year, I read a lengthy history of the British Empire. In preparation for our upcoming trip to Paris, I decided to look for some novels featuring the city of lights. My first choice was Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, but they didn't have a copy of it available when I went to the library and I wasn't about to embark on a transcontinental flight without some reading material, so I picked up Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, a book that I found a recommendation for on a random literature blog. It's the debut novel by Faize Guene, a Algerian-French college student. As I thumbed through the book in the library, I realized that I couldn't recall the last book I read that was written by a woman. Perhaps breaking this streak with a book written by a teenager wasn't the greatest idea. It was a light read and heartwarming without being too sentimental, but it didn't do a whole lot for me. With the exception of about three pages, none of the story actually took place in Paris. Instead, the book paints a fairly vivid picture of the much less glamorous immigrant neighborhoods on the outskits of Paris. Since I doubt we'll be making it out there on our trip, this book at least gave me a taste of what life is like for people stuck between France and their homeland.

I did eventually get my hands on a copy of A Moveable Feast, which I just finished reading. Not all of the stories in the book take place in Paris, but the ones that do are quite evocative. I fear that the stories may have romanticized the Parisian cafe well beyond what any establishment could hope to offer, however. I probably learned more about Hemingway than Paris from the book. I've always pictured Hemingway as impossibly rugged and gruff; uncomfortable unless he was in a bull fight, boxing match, war, safari, or some other sort of manly pursuit. His persona in A Moveable Feast doesn't really fit this description. The Hemingway of A Moveable Feast is rather docile and domestic. His persona does start to change in the final story, which contains some of the anger and philandering that I have always associated with Hemingway.

Abundantly Clear

I just finished reading Brink Lindsey's The Age of Abundance. It's something of a condensed libertarian history of the US, with an emphasis on the postwar period. The crux of the book is the idea that the culture war politics that have pervaded American political discourse since the late 1960s are a product of a libertarian awakening of sorts. The anti-establishment left and the religious right are two sides of the same coin. The rise of mass affluence has given people the chance to spend their surplus time, energy, and money on defining themselves, connecting with people who share their interests and values, and recruiting others to their side. Along the way, the population has become more comfortable with the ideas social and economic liberty, possibly unbeknownst to themselves. While I largely agreed with this thesis before reading the book, I think the book does upend a lot of the conventional wisdom about politics in postwar America, so it could be a very interesting read for anyone who has never been exposed to the writing of Lindsey and his contemporaries.

Walk and Run

We watched Walk the Line today. We both enjoyed the movie, but we especially enjoyed the music. Neither of us are big Johnny Cash fans, so familiarity with his music is certainly not a prerequisite for enjoying the movie. I really liked how a lot of scenes used music instead of dialog to tell the story. Letting Cash's lyrics and his interaction with June Carter on stage tell the story was a lot more effective that trying to act it out would have been.

I was surprised to learn how much of Cash's early career coincided with the careers of early rock and rollers like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. I've always thought of Johnny Cash as more of a country musician. Early rock and roll has a lot of country music influence in it, of course, so this didn't come as a complete surprise. Had I ever really sat down and listened to Cash's music, I'm sure I would have made that connection.

I also finally finished reading Rabbit, Run by John Updike. It wasn't really on my to-read list, but I received a copy of it at a yankee swap last Christmas and decided to give it a shot. I really enjoyed it, but unfortunately, I read most of it in 15 minute chunks over the past two months. I don't think that's a good way to read anything, but it's an especially bad way to read a story full of such vivid language and rich characters. It's not a heavy book, you could probably read most of it on a long flight, but it's the kind of story that draws you in so completely that you really should plan on spending some quality with the book ever time you crack it open. The other downside is that it's the first book in a series of four and none of the plots threads that were opened in Rabbit, Run are tied up by the end of the book. My copy contains the first two books in the series, and while I'd really like to jump right into the next book (Rabbit Redux) so I can get some closure, I'm going to try and clear a few more titles of off my to-read list before going back. I may even decide to re-read Rabbit, Run and go straight into Rabbit Redux just so I can give the story the attention that I think it deserves.

Into the Wild

I finished reading Into the Wild today. It was a quick read and while it didn't shake me as much as Into Thin Air (also by Jon Krakauer), it was still a very moving story. Into the Wild is the story of Chis McCandless, a young man who turns his back on his family, friends, and society to live simple, nomadic life. His travels take him across the Western United States and finally, into the Alaskan interior, where he meets his demise. While I didn't necessarily identify with McCandless, I felt like I understood enough about where he was coming from and I think that most men (and perhaps most women) will find at least a few things in McCandless' story that will remind them of themselves at a certain age. I certainly shared his fascination with the American West and I too made my own solo trek across the country, albeit in a much more conventional manner. While I never sought out the ascetic lifestyle that he cultivated, I managed to approximate it on several occasions when my frequent moves between work, home, and school made the accumulation of basic home furnishings more trouble than it was worth.

I think that the book is a good read regardless of where you stand on McCandless' lifestyle, beliefs, or how you feel about his aptitude as an outdoorsman. I get upset by people who write angry letters to the editor after a publication does a feature about someone who has either gotten in trouble due to a string of bad decisions or has recently straightened their life back out after a string of bad choices. You have to have an astonishingly simple mind to believe that any writer who fails to condemn a man who has made some obviously bad choices is tacitly endorsing those choices. Furthermore, as Krakauer points out in the book, people take unreasonable risks all of the time, especially out in Alaska. It's only the ones who have the misfortune of dying that face the scrutiny of the public.

If you're illiterate or reading just isn't your thing, a film adaptation of the book came out last year. I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds like it came out pretty well.

Lonely Continent

If you've ever looked in the travel section at your local library or bookstore, you are probably familiar with Lonely Planet series of guidebooks. Unlike some travel guides that only focus on the most popular travel destinations, Lonely Planet tries to provide guidance to all travelers, perhaps to a fault. I remember flipping through their write-up of Kinshasa a while back, which offered many useful pieces of advice, such as how much to bribe the various characters you were likely to encounter on your way from the airport to the hotel and the hours of day during which it may be safe to leave the hotel. In spite of this, I was still somewhat shocked to find a copy of the Lonely Planet's guide to Antarctica when I was at the bookstore last week. According to this this article, Antarctic tourism is exploding, with an estimated 28,000 visitors in 2006. That's a lot more that I had figured, but unless a fairly large percentage of those visitors are buying a copy of the Lonely Planet's guide to Antarctica, I doubt it's a moneymaker. If nothing else, it cements their reputation as the go-to source for travel information for obscure destinations (at least, for Western, English-speaking travelers). I'm kind of surprised they haven't enlisted one of the Apollo astronauts to write a Lonely Planet guidebook for the Moon.