Amos Barton

I recently finished my eighth book of 2010, The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton by George Eliot. Someone recommended Eliot's slightly more noteworthy novel, Silas Marner, but when I couldn't find it, I settled for Barton. Hey, it was right there.

The book is about a pastor who is mediocre in every way, although he himself doesn't think that. He is generally not well liked by his constituents. The one thing he has going for him is that everyone thinks his wife is fantastic. He reminds me of someone I know, but then his wife gets sick and dies.

Because of the pessimistic nature of the narrative, I'll concentrate instead on something else of the novel that was of interest, and that is this: George Eliot was a woman.

This seems like something that someone probably tried to teach me, but that I failed to retain.

Eliot's real name is Mary Anne Evans, and her story starts most notably with a harsh critique of female authors - Silly Novels by Lady Novelists which appeared in The Westminster Review. The screed tears apart the idea that a woman could ever write a novel. This is fun because Evans' own criticism is a part of the reason she had to use a pen name.

Throughout Barton, the narrator goes out of her way to make the kinds of remarks you would expect from a chauvinist, almost as if Evans felt a need to defend her pen name beyond its obvious masculinity.

But of particular interest to you, dear reader*, is this. In her lifetime Evans was reviled by literary society and people in general for her public affair with author George Henry Lewes, which shows that TMZ has been around longer than anyone thinks.

* This is the kind of technique Eliot utilized frequently, the narrator's address to the audience.

However, as the dust jacket of my library book informs me, Eliot's legacy did not end with the shunning she and her partner endured, and after a number of years she was remembered not at all for that, but for instead for being one of the most gifted and beloved writers of her era.

That's great news for Tiger Woods.

What the Dog Saw

Today I finished my seventh book of 2010, Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw. This was one of those books that required a two-month wait at the library. Uber-bestseller Gladwell has the remarkable ability to make uninteresting things seem positively intriguing, and writes at the kind of pace that causes you not to realize that you've been reading about the history of ketchup for forty minutes straight.

This is what makes Gladwell so unique. I wouldn't expect that you could pay me enough money to read about the Ronco guy, but there I was, riveted as I followed the life arc of the same guy who peddled the Veg-O-Matic, the Showtime Rotisserie grill, and the Ronco Flavor Injector.

For example, did you know that Ron Popeil's mom once paid a hitman to kill his dad? Furthermore, did you know that's the reason they divorced?* And did you know that a year later, they got back together again?

* If you knew the first part, I suppose you could have guessed at the second.

Still, there's something a bit dissatisfying about this latest bestseller. Dog is a compilation of Gladwell's favorite articles that he's written for the New Yorker for more than a decade. It's not such a bad gig to make a few million dollars again, merely by reposting the stuff that made you a million dollars to begin with. And while it might be detestable for us to think about, it's not so detestable that I wouldn't consider doing it myself.

I've already worked on several drafts for what my book would look like, and thanks to blogger's ubiquitous labels tool, it's easier than ever for bloggers to compile articles into ready-to-print book forms:

• I Am an Idiot: The Aaron Helman Story
• The Men Who Inspired Me: The Nudge Toward Mediocrity
• Kind of Gross: Things that Are Kind of Gross
• Stories Where I'm Not Wearing Pants
• Reasons I Will Always Be Single: An Underdog Story
• Ferret in a Sweater: The Coffee Table Book for Aficionados

The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork

Tonight, I finished my sixth book of 2010, The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork, another work from famed leadership guru John Maxwell. I'm not entirely sure how one becomes a guru, although I do know that it doesn't sound like a bad gig. Maxwell talks continually about life in Atlanta, which sounds like a warm place. It's worth noting that before he attained his guru status, Maxwell was in ministry in Indiana, and it doesn't take a guru to figure out that the gentler climes of Atlanta might make for a better home.

17 Laws, like any business book, is full of valuable advice, but can easily be dated by the twists and turns of the particular businesses it chooses to study. In Good to Great, Jim Collins refers to Circuit City as one of his great companies only 24 months before it shuddered doors across the country. And in 17 Laws, Maxwell espouses the praises of one company that holds tightly to a rigid moral compass, and that company is, as you would have guessed, Enron.*

* Later, we're treated to the rhetorical question: What kind of people chose to go into leadership at Enron?

Anyway, all of this talk of the laws of teamwork made me think real hard about some of the best teams I've ever had the fortune to be a part of.

1. The HAKK Team: It's a church leadership team featuring Herb, Aaron, Karen, and Kim. We joined a dodgeball league this spring and finished 4-2 with a disappointing finish in the semi-finals against the staff of Barnes & Noble.

2. Aunt Jane's Pickles: My little league team in the 4th grade. I played first base and batted sixth. We were a good team because our two best pitchers had to shave.

3. This one time, Paul and I got on the same team at Ultimate Frisbee: He's fast, and no one realized that when we were choosing teams. I'm tall, and apparently, no one realized that when we were picking teams either.

4. 2002 Cory Bretz Flag Football: We finished 9-1 in the regular season and lost in the championship game, but we smoked the cigars anyway.

5. 1909 Chicago Cubs: Talk about being a day late and a dollar short.

Have a Little Faith

Earlier this year, I asked for book recommendations on the condition that if someone recommended a book, I had to read it. So today, I finished my fifth book of 2010, Mitch Albom's Have a Little Faith. I've never been a big fan of Albom*, because a lot of what he says is a little too syrupy for my taste. This isn't to say that he doesn't relay quality stories with quality insights, just that he does so with a little too much sugar.

* And who listens to Alboms anymore!?**

** Pun.

The book centers around Albom's wrestle with faith and religious co-existence as he works to write his beloved rabbi's eulogy. He also dives into the economic downturn of Detroit, by getting involved with a rundown church that's doubling as a homeless shelter. But mostly its about his waning Jewishness* and how he comes to reclaim pieces of that as he gets reacquainted with the old rabbi.

* That's a quality band name if I've ever seen one.

It is also about Albom's refusal to use quotation marks when he, himself, is a part of the dialogue; a tool that has become a trademark style, and a little annoying at the same time.

This makes me think that maybe what I need to differentiate myself as a writer is a trademark style to call my own, which is why, for the remainder of this post, I will end each sentence with two periods instead of one and capitalize the letter P every time I use it.. Albom's blatant disresPect for grammar made him a bestseller, after all..

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Faith made me wonder about Pieces of my own eulogy, and who I might ask to deliver it when the time comes.. Ricky Gervais handled the Golden Globes alright, and I think he'd do a fine job at my funeral.. But I'd be awfully disaPPointed* if I didn't outlive that guy..

I suPPose it doesn't matter too much who gives the sPeech, just as long as he or she hits on the high Points of my life so far: My first chest hair, for examPle, or the first time I ate entire Pizza by myself.. This Person will need to know about these events, and in the case that my eulogy is transcribed for a literary audience, as it was in Faith, this Person needs to ProPerly use syntax, grammar, and Punctuation, because - darn it Mitch! - this stuff is hard to read..

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Today, I finished my fourth book of 2010, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller, the same affable fellow who wrote the bestseller Blue Like Jazz. He claims that the book is about his efforts to try to turn Jazz into a movie, and what he learned about his life while he was editing it for a screenplay.

Of course, that's really not the case at all. The book is, like Jazz, a collection of personal stories, all tied together through the common thread that is Miller's unmistakable style and trademark humor.

I'm also struck by Miller's strange habit of naming the book after a single memorable phrase* that happened to be contained in its pages, even if the phrase has little to do with the crux of the book.

* I suppose it would be like me naming my book A Moment of Restrained Euphoria. It's a random phrase from a random post, and I'll give a dollar to the first person who can identify it.

It also has a picture of a bicycle on the front, so I had to read it.

Thousand Years reminds me a lot of what my blog might be if I turned it into a book and found creative ways to tie together stories about riding bikes, hitchhiking, adventures in coffee shops, and a series of stories in which I wasn't wearing pants. Come to think of it, this book is my blog, were I a better writer and in poorer shape.*

* This would be Miller's concession, not mine.

It was a good book, but it was a frustrating book. In short, it was the book I should have written over the course of the last three or four years. In fact, it's the book I always intended to write over the course of the last three or four years. And of course, now that Miller's written it, I can't.

I would feel sad about it, but instead I'll try to find ways to differentiate my own writings from those of Donald Miller, and I've got at least one thing going for me that he doesn't*:

* And I swear to Mohamed, if Donald Miller's next book is about ferrets in sweaters, I'm suing him for identity theft.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

I finished my third book of 2010, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. He tells the story of how four very different meals arrive on our dinner tables. He explains the life of a McDonald's value meal and the life of an environmentally friendly* organic meal. He goes on to explain how at least one local farm works, then proceeds to exegete the history of an entirely locally-grown meal. Finally, he creates a meal out of food that he either grew, killed, or foraged for himself.

* And actually, this might not be true. In order to eat organic asparagus in November, the veggies have to be flown express from Argentina. Maybe not the environment-friendly scenario we've been led to believe.

I learned all sorts of interesting things. 97% of the calories in your McDonald's sack come directly from corn, and that might not be a good thing. Argentinians eat far more red meat than we do, but theirs being entirely grass-fed, the population suffers almost no heart disease.* Their only trade-off is that they are forced to eat a tastier beef, one that tastes like beef was intended to taste.

* Don't cry for beef, Argentina?

I learned about the highly secretive underground culture of mushroom collectors, and I can understand it. Pollan attaches himself to a group that pulls in more than 60 pounds of morels, and sells them to restaurateurs at $20/pound. Do the math.

Most interesting though was the ecological web of the small local farm. Poop is collected and used meticulously for the benefit of the farm, the animals, and the end-consumers. The texture of the eggs is different. The color of the yolks is different. In short, eggs, the way they are meant to be, are not the same thing as the eggs we eat today.* Of course, all of this makes me want to own chickens and collect poop. Lindsay is not too keen on this.

* If you are what you eat, then it makes sense. Mass-produced farm animals always eat things other than what they're supposed to eat and it changes them.

It's one of those books that you read and then have your greatest epiphanies afterward. You mean, 60 pounds of mushrooms could get me a used car?

Traffic

I just finished my second book of 2010 - Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. Aside from the over-punctuated and heavily-worded title, it was an interesting glimpse into the genesis of traffic jams, the danger involved with driving a car, and what we can all do about it.

What makes all of this so perplexing is that cities have employed traffic specialists since the 1800s (to manage all the horses, not even to speak of their poo), and no one can nail down anything close to an accurate answer to explain much of our traffic woes.

Traffic engineers have gone to miraculous lengths to make safer, more forgiving roads only to learn later that these roads encourage drivers to try even riskier high-speed maneuvers. Some more dangerous roads actually operate more safely because drivers concentrate on driving safely. Vanderbilt interviews traffic experts (more than you would have ever thought existed) and even speaks to "one of the leading experts" in queue formation.

But there are answers.

To put it simply, the easiest way to alleviate traffic is for you to get off of the road and get out of my way so I can get to work on time.* Of course, it doesn't work, because what's good for society (or for gridlock) certainly isn't good for the individuals most affected. It's why listening to the traffic report works best when you're the only one listening to it. When the radioman says that an alternate route in Chicago is faster, it's not surprising that 30,000 people sprint to clog up the alternate route.

* From the Onion: 98% of People Favor Public Transportation for Others.

Similar is the concept of night driving. One of Vanderbilt's most ostentatious claims is that in order for night driving to be as safe as day driving, we'd all have to move at 20 mph. Of course, if you move along at that kind of a speed (or lack thereof) on a highway, you are in significantly more danger because not everyone is going to heed that advice.

Smaller, lighter cars are safer - but only if everyone drives one. If you're the only one, then your car is significantly more dangerous, at least to yourself.

This book made me think, and mostly it made me think about this: I wonder what it would take to become an expert in queue formation.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

Yesterday, I completed (and started, not coincidentally) my first book of 2010, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett. It's the true story about the rise and fall of John Gilkey, a sad and obsessive man who stole an estimated $200,000 in rare books.

Many rare book thieves have found that it is far easier to pilfer and resell a rare book than say, a Tiffany necklace, and therefore make a profit. But Gilkey's motives were not financial. Instead, he appears to have stolen because of his obsession with books, and his ambitions to have the kind of library John D. Rockefeller would have had.

But perhaps most fascinating is the glimpse that Bartlett provides into the occasionally seedy world of rare book collectors, dealers, and mediators. Most of these people will never read the books they collect* and instead merely want them for display or merely to experience the satisfaction of knowing that they are one of only three people who owns the First Edition of the Cat in the Hat.

* The rarest books are frequently the most controversial ones. When book-bannings and book-burnings happen, they create a lower supply; and so these books are the most heavily sought. One man described a book he had just purchased for more than $100,000 as "pure filth" and that he would never allow himself to read such garbage. Imagine your priest purchasing a Farrah Fawcett autographed Playboy simply because he liked rare things, and there you are.

Gilkey himself, is a haunting character. Harmless, but convinced he hadn't done anything wrong (just making things fair, he would explain), Gilkey doesn't believe he's committed any moral transgressions, and seems likely to do it again. He explains that if you want something, but don't have the money to purchase it, than what other possible recourse would you have?

--

I read the book in its entirety will sitting in Barnes & Noble. I selected it when I arrived and reshelved it on my way out. I wonder if that makes me a different kind of book thief, but I don't really feel guilty about it.

Oddballs in Indiana

I spent some time at a Barnes & Noble last night, skimming a book called Indiana Curiosities. I was looking for little things that might make good day trips on a bicycle. I made a few interesting notes:

• Crete, IN: The birthplace of infamous cult leader Jim Jones. Did you know he raised money for his first church by selling pet monkeys?
  
• Mentone, IN: Home of the world's largest concrete egg.
• Churubusco, IN: Allegedly the home of an evil, 450-pound snapper turtle.

The book was full of really bizarre locations in Indiana. Then something unexpected happened. I saw a person that I knew. There was Tim Evans, standing with his sort-of-famous mousetrap collection, indexed in this book of Indiana curiosities. Tim is a Calvary member, his wife works here, and I've watched their son on a number of occasions. In addition to all of those things, he is included in the book Indiana Curiosities.

I know a famous person.

The John Deere Way

One of my new year's resolutions was to read more. And to blog more. So I guess I'll be blogging about books. How's that?

Today, I read The John Deere Way by David Magee. It was a neat book that investigated the success of one of America's most durable brands. I was struck by a couple of stories:

• During the Depression, John Deere refused to call in loans or repossess farmers. To this day, it is not uncommon for a family farmer to buy John Deere because the company saved the family farm 80 years ago.
• When a back in Moline, Ill. had a $1.3 million scare that threatened the savings of John Deere factory workers, the company made up the difference at the bank.
• John Deere's incredible slogan: "I will not put my name on a product that does not have in it the best that is in me."

The bottom line is that John Deere is busy doing everything they can to ensure their customers receive a superior product. That kind of commitment generates word of mouth, return customers. The church doesn't have customers per se, but we need to be in the business of treating people with that same level of excellence.

Made to Stick

One of my new year's resolutions was to read more. And to blog more. So I guess I'll be blogging about books. How's that?

I recently knocked out Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath. It's an interesting book about the transfer of ideas (and often, the failure to do so). The brothers Heath have all sorts of good ideas and interesting anecdotes about how to effectively communicate ideas. A couple highlights:

• Communicating the fat content of movie theater popcorn not by using nebulous terms like "grams" and "polyunsaturated." Instead, the organization stacked up an Egg McMuffin, a burger, fries, and a steak with fixings. Message received.
• A school had a mandatory training day for all teachers and administrators. The proper lead for this story in the school newspaper? Classes are canceled on Thursday.
• John F. Kennedy's simple, concrete, and memorable rhetoric.

This book falls in well with Godin's All Marketers are Liars, or anything Gladwell's done. It's a worthwhile read for anyone who has to communicate specialized knowledge on a regular basis. Also, it has a really cool cover design.

Beer and Philosophy

One of my new year's resolutions was to read more. And to blog more. So I guess I'll be blogging about books. How's that?

I just finished reading Beer and Philosophy, edited by Steven D. Hales. It's an interesting concept. If you took a highbrow subject like philosophy out of the Ivy League classroom and into a plebeian setting, like a bar, what would happen?

Some of the philosophy is indeed very elevated. Kant, Nietzsche, those guys all make appearances in the conversations of brewers, bartenders, and bar goers. Writers discussed metaphysics, different definitions of theism, the virtues of knowledge, and even realism. It was complicated stuff.

The conclusion? If you put Kant, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Plato, and Pascal in a bar and let them discuss their views, their environment will change. But it will still be confusing as all get-out.

Still, an interesting read if you can keep up.

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Now playing: Hootie & The Blowfish - Old Man & Me

What Should I Read Next?

I go through these phases where I'm big into reading and I'll knock out some 10 books in like a month. And then it'll be four months before I pick up another. Sort of like how I order Chinese food like six times in three weeks and then I won't go near the stuff. Seriously, all the technology in the world and scientists can't figure out how to alter four pounds of rice and chicken so that an hour later it feels like I ate something?

But I digress.

I found the website whatshouldIreadnext.com a couple weeks ago, but it's been less than helpful. It only considers one book you've read and than spits out books about similar subject matter - at least for the most part. But suffice it to say, Michael Lewis's The Blind Side is not even close to the Pro Football Prospectus 2007. One is an awesome sort of Freakonomics-meets-sports-nonfiction-novel. The other is essentially a stat guide.

So now you get to pick. What should I read next?