An open letter to the Johnson County Library patrons who last borrowed the "Dead Like Me" season 1 DVDs

Learn how to handle DVDs so they don't get so scratched up they're unwatchable. Nimrods.

52 Books in 52 Weeks, 2009 Edition

It’s time for another “52 Books in 52 Weeks” recap.

The grand total was 66 books this year, well above last year’s total. I posted back in October when I met my yearly goal, so the last ten weeks of the year were pretty much gravy.

This year’s histogram:

By comparison, the same chart for last year:

My reading rate was more consistent this year, with two outliers. September was a busy month at work, which I suppose could explain why it was light on reading. June surprises me; you’d think the summer months would be more conducive to reading, but maybe not.

I really focused on continuing series this year. In addition to continuing to work through series by Jim Butcher, Lee Child, and Michael Connelly, I started reading Jasper Fforde, Charlie Huston, and Arthur Phillips.

Yes, I read the Twilight series. No, I’m not ashamed of it; now I know what all the fuss is about. I won’t go on about what I think is wrong with them; others have covered those issues better than I can, though perhaps not quite as humorously as in this comic. I’ll limit myself to saying that anyone who thinks that the Harry Potter series is bad for kids but Twilight isn’t has a misguided set of priorities, in my opinion.

Other quantitative facts:

• Books by authors whose blogs I read regularly: 4
• Books I own, signed by the author: 2
• Books made into movies: 4 (with at least 3 more likely to be in the future)
• Books that now I can’t remember having read: 2

That last one is probably an indication that I’m reading a little too much, at a rate above my retention level. One of the things I’m planning to do this year is capsule reviews after reading, which should at least give me something to refer back to.

Here’s the entire list for 2009, in reverse chronological order:

• Coupland, Douglas. Generation A.
• Fforde, Jasper. Lost In a Good Book.
• Butcher, Jim. Death Masks.
• Meyer, Stephenie. Breaking Dawn.
• Locke, Christopher. Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices.
• Philips, Arthur. The Egyptologist: A Novel.
• Posnanski, Joe. The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds.
• Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun.
• Niven, Larry and Lerner, Edward M. Destroyer of Worlds.
• See, Lisa. Shanghai Girls.
• Brown, Dan. The Lost Symbol.
• Joss, Morag. Half Broken Things.
• Milton, Giles. Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History.
• Almond, Steve. Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America.
• Silbert, Leslie. The Intelligencer.
• Stafford, Tom and Webb, Matt. Mind Hacks: Tips & Tools for Using Your Brain in the World.
• Larsson, Stieg. The Girl Who Played With Fire.
• Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk.
• Grossman, Austin. Soon I Will Become Invincible.
• Parker, T. Jefferson. Cold Pursuit.
• Child, Lee. Echo Burning.
• Hornfischer, James D. The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.
• Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair.
• Grann, David. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.
• Huston, Charlie. No Dominion.
• Lewis, Michael. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.
• Petroski, Henry. Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer.
• Connelly, Michael. The Last Coyote.
• Potter, Christopher. You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe.
• Meyer, Stephenie. Eclipse.
• Bonner, Kevin Jan. Furniture Restoration and Repair for Beginners.
• Butcher, Jim. Summer Knight.
• Schramm, Ken. The Compleat Meadmaker.
• Nissel, Angela. Mixed: My Life in Black and White.
• Meyer, Stephenie. New Moon.
• Joss, Morag. Fruitful Bodies.
• Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.
• Huston, Charlie. Already Dead.
• Safina, Carl. Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth’s Last Dinosaur.
• Connelly, Michael. The Concrete Blonde.
• Schneier, Bruce. Beyond Fear.
• Philips, Arthur. Prague: A Novel.
• Fowler, Chrisopher. The Victoria Vanishes.
• Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight.
• Rowling, J.K. The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
• Roach, Mary. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.
• Child, Lee. Running Blind.
• Petroski, Henry. The Evolution of Useful Things.
• Butcher, Jim. Grave Peril.
• Hodgman, John. More Information Than You Require.
• Sedaris, David. Holidays on Ice.
• Carlsen, Spike. A Splintered History of Wood: Belt Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers, and Baseball Bats.
• Vanderbilt, Tom. Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us).
• Baricco, Alessandro. Silk.
• Berenson, Alex. The Faithful Spy.
• Zoellner, Tom. The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire.
• Larsson, Stieg. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
• Schwarz, Christopher. Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use.
• Dublanica, Steve. Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip – Confessions of a Cynical Waiter.
• O’Connell, Carol. Dead Famous.
• Jay, Ricky. Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women.
• Sobel, Dava. Galileo’s Daughter.
• Pelecanos, George. The Turnaround.
• Hieronymus, Stan. Brew Like a Monk.
• Wright, Evan. Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War.
• Rucka, Greg. A Gentleman’s Game.

Variations on a Theme by an Insomniac

• I spent a little time playing with styling this blog by hand, then decided to fall back to one of Blogger's built-in themes. I'm still not 100% happy, but it will do for now.
• This has been a good 52 Books/52 Weeks year. I finished #66 yesterday; I may get #67 before the year is out.
• It's midnight, and I'm browsing through blog posts from six years ago instead of sleeping.

#52 is in the house.

So is #53. I don't know which of the two I'll finish first. And it's only the middle of October.

More blog plumbing

I have connected this blog to my Twitter account through twitterfeed. Let's see if this works.

Pardon the dust.

I'm fiddling with the theme and other mechanical whatnots, so things may be a bit on the garish side for a little while. I apologize in advance to anyone who still reads this rag besides me for any offenses to your visual acuity or good taste.

Today, we were supposed to go camping.

Four years ago today, we were supposed to go on a family camping trip. Instead, we went to the hospital, and our lives were never the same again.

September 22, 2005. Abbey started exhibiting the symptoms of a stomach bug: vomiting, lethargy. We were heading down to southern Missouri for a campout the next day, and figured this was a case of bad timing at the worst.

Throughout the night, she was up every half hour to throw up. Then we noticed the panting, the shortness of breath, and started to suspect that there was something more going on. We called the 24-hour nurse line: "Sounds like an asthma attack. Go ahead and take her to the emergency room."

The ER doctor took one whiff of her breath: "She's in DKA—she needs to be admitted immediately." An hour later, we were in the pediatric ICU at Children's Mercy Hospital, feeling shell-shocked and wondering about the future.

* * *

Abbey has been living with type 1 diabetes for four years now. Publicly, she leads the life of a normal ten-year-old, but privately it's anything but. She wears an insulin infusion pump, to ensure that her blood doesn't turn toxic. She sticks her fingers eight times a day to check her blood sugar level, to ensure that it's under control. She monitors what she eats, to ensure that the carbohydrates in her food are matched with enough insulin to metabolize them.

On October 10, 2009, we'll be participating in the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund is committed to finding a cure for type 1 diabetes—not just treatment, but eradication of the disease in those who currently have it as well as its prevention in those who don't.

Please consider donating to our team.

Ten Years Ago: "Cottingham TNG" Ships

This was originally posted to the InfoWorld Electric forums on 01 April 1999.

PR: "Cottingham TNG" Ships

April 1, 1999
For Immediate Release

 

Cottingham & Cottingham (C&C) of Olathe, KS, USA today announced their first product, Abigail Rose. "This product represents a major milestone for C&C," said marketing director Craig S. Cottingham. "Abigail Rose is was designed and produced entirely by C&C, from the ground up."

C&C describes Abigail Rose as "a cooperative set of non-linear servoactuators controlled by a non-deterministic processor, in a package only 20" long and weighing only 8 lb, 6 oz." What sets Abigail Rose apart is that the processor ships with only basic functionality enabled. More advanced tasks become possible as Abigail Rose adapts to its environment, effectively "learning" new behaviors. "It's amazing to watch," noted Cottingham. "In the few short hours since the release party, we've seen an increase in input/output processing and fewer audible error conditions." Abigail Rose also includes an adaptive code generator featuring C&C's Dynamic Realtime Object Oriented Language (DROOL), and can produce large quantities of DROOL in a short time period.

The product was announced at a developer's conference held on an unlikely date (April 1st, commonly known as "April Fool's Day" in the US) at an unlikely time (5:45 AM CST) in an unlikely location (St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, MO, USA). "At first we were worried that people might think that the announcement was some kind of April Fool's Day prank," Cottingham said. "At C&C, however, we believe that once the product is ready, it ships." As evidence, he pointed to the fact that the development team, led by Angela Cottingham, was working hard right up to the literal moment the product was released. "We're very proud of the quality of work they did. We in the marketing department basically provided them with an incomplete design specification, and they came up with this gem."

Additional details on Abigail Rose, including product illustrations, can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/craig.cottingham/AbigailRose19990401

About Cottingham & Cottingham (C&C)

C&C was formed in 1995 from the merger of two unrelated corporate entities, with the goal of maximizing long-term gains while providing an enjoyable end-user experience. They can be reached at craig.cottingham@gmail.com.

52 Books in 52 Weeks, 2008 Edition

It’s time for another “52 Books in 52 Weeks” recap.

The grand total was 49 books this year, three short of my goal. I recall around the beginning of December that I was running about 5 or 6 books off my pace, so apparently I made up a little ground at the end. Not enough, as it turns out.

I keep track of both the books I’ve read and my todo list on Backpack, as a checklist. Recently, they added the date an item was checked off to the list display, but it looks like they’ve been collecting it all along. As a result, I now have a record of when I finished each book, to within a day or two.

This lends itself to some more sophisticated statistics.

For instance, here’s a histogram of how many books I read in each month of 2008:

July was my best month, April my worst. April was when I fell behind, and I never recovered the pace, though I came close in July.

Other quantitative facts:

• Books by sportswriters: 3
• Books by children of former US Vice Presidents: 1
• Books made into movies: 3

The biggest disappointment of the year was, I think, The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. Her first book, The Lovely Bones, remains one of my all-time favorite books, and I was excited to learn earlier today that it’s been made into a movie, by Peter Jackson no less. Compared to it, The Almost Moon was a letdown. No, that’s not entirely fair; it was a letdown even when not compared to The Lovely Bones.

Picking my favorite from this list is a lot harder. In fact, I’m not going to. Maybe I could come up with a top 10, but since that’s almost 20% of the total list, that doesn’t seem terribly useful.

Here’s the entire list for 2008, in reverse chronological order:

• Fatsis, Stefan. A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL.
• Sheehan, Michael A. Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism Without Terrorizing Ourselves.
• Phillips, Marie. Gods Behaving Badly.
• de Santis, Pablo. The Paris Enigma.
• Butcher, Jim. Fool Moon.
• Quinion, Michael. Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: ingenious tales of words and their origins.
• Shepard, Jim. Project X.
• Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t.
• Pelecanos, George P. Hell to Pay.
• Niven, Larry and Lerner, Edward M. Juggler of Worlds.
• Posnanski, Joe. The Good Stuff.
• Petroski, Henry. Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering.
• Connelly, Michael. The Black Ice.
• Deford, Frank. I’m Just Getting Started.
• Huff, Tanya. Smoke and Shadows.
• Walsh, Peter. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff.
• Gill, Michael Gates. How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.
• Sedaris, David. When You Are Engulfed in Flames.
• Burrough, Bryan. Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34.
• Miller, John Ramsey. Upside Down.
• Coupland, Douglas. Girlfriend in a Coma.
• Spencer-Fleming, Julia. I Shall Not Want.
• Wells, Ken. Travels with Barley: A Journey Through Beer Culture in America.
• Winchester, Simon. The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom.
• Butcher, Jim. Storm Front.
• Couch, Dick. The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228.
• Johnson, Adam. Parasites Like Us.
• Sacks, Oliver. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.
• Child, Lee. Nothing to Lose.
• Helprin, Mark. The Pacific and Other Stories.
• Fuller, Alexandra. Scribbling the Cat.
• Joss, Morag. Fearful Symmetry.
• Mezrich, Ben. Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions.
• Prachett, Terry. Carpe Jugulum.
• Metzger, Robert A. Cusp.
• Connelly, Michael. The Overlook.
• Coupland, Douglas. The Gum Thief.
• Logan, Chuck. After the Rain.
• Mayle, Peter. A Good Year.
• Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us.
• Crile, George. Charlie Wilson’s War.
• Gore, Kristin. Sammy’s House.
• Clarke, Thurston. Searching for Crusoe: A Journey Among the Last Real Islands.
• Frey, Stephen. The Chairman.
• Niven, Larry and Lerner, Edward M. Fleet of Worlds.
• Curtis, Bryan. The Explainer.
• Sebold, Alice. The Almost Moon.
• Buford, Bill. Heat : an amateur’s adventures as kitchen slave, line cook, pasta maker, and apprentice to a Dante-quoting butcher in Tuscany.
• Grafton, Sue. T is for Trespass.

There's another one in the family, now.

Angela just got back from the hospital, where her niece was just diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The good news is, since we went through the same thing two and a half years ago, Angela's brother and his wife had a better idea of what they were dealing with than we did at the time. As a result, their daughter wasn't as far into DKA as our daughter was. The bad news is, there's now one more child in the world with diabetes.

Finally, graft and corruption.

We went to Wichita yesterday for Equifest of Kansas, a horse-related expo. It was nice to get out of the house and go somewhere that we hadn't been before. On the plus side, to get there from here you go through the Flint Hills, which is the closest thing we have in Kansas to, well, hills. On the minus side, apparently I snore when I sleep, and I snore louder (or perhaps more) in hotel beds than the one at home, so neither my wife nor my daughter got as much sleep as they'd have liked.

For lunch on Saturday we went to River City Brewing Company in Old Town Wichita. They're in the middle of their 15th anniversary celebration, and the place was packed even at about 2 in the afternoon. For the occasion, they had on tap a porter aged in Bulleit bourbon whiskey barrels; it had a slight oaky, smoky flavor, as well as a touch of bourbon—which is not necessarily a bad thing. I also sampled an oak-aged old ale, which was tasty but had little to none of the oxidized character you usually find in an old ale. The chocolate bock was lighter in body than a traditional bock (note that I'm not talking about Shiner Bock here), but with some roasty, chocolately notes that you don't find in a maibock. The Rock Island Red was a good American pale ale, but not red enough for an American amber (which a red ale should qualify as).

Yes, I judge beer even when I'm out for food or fun. This time, I was aided and abetted by our friend Stephen, who not only is a horse person (we met up with him at Equifest) but also a fellow homebrewer from the NE Kansas area. He noticed that several customers were carrying T-shirts the same burnt-orange color as those the waitstaff were wearing, and asked our server about them. She said they weren't for sale, but the manager was giving them away to selected individuals at his discretion. Upon hearing this, Stephen and I pulled out our BJCP membership cards and explained that we are registered beer judges, and did that count for anything? Sure enough, she came back a few minutes later with T-shirts for us.

See? Being a beer judge is cool. :-)

There is no dark side of the moon...

...fact is, it's all dark.

Taken with a Canon PowerShot A530 jammed up against a 25mm eyepiece in a 4.5" Newtonian telescope. I was hoping to get a picture at the moment of totality, but the mother of all cloudbanks moved in from the southwest.

Amazon is not killing the iTunes Store any time soon.

I have finally started clearing out our CD collection. There are a lot of discs in here that we never listen to, and others that we bought just for one song. (Remember when that was your only option?) Half Price Books offers a decent price for used CDs with little hassle, so that has been my outlet of choice so far. The proceeds from selling discs will go to buying individual tracks to replace more CDs, though I’ve found fewer than ten songs so far that I feel need to be replaced.

Not every song on CD is available at the iTunes Store, and getting rid of plastic mass outweighs brand loyalty in this case. Amazon’s MP3 store got a lot of press a few months back for offering DRM-free music at a price matching or beating Apple’s FairPlay-protected files. I figure that’s a good alternative, right?

One of the discs I’m looking to replace is a compilation of songs from movie soundtracks, produced by Blockbuster. The only track worth keeping is Vince Gill’s “Ophelia” from the Mel Gibson-Jodie Foster flick Maverick. The iTunes Store doesn’t have it, so let’s check the Amazon MP3 store.

Searching on “vince gill” is easy enough, but returns 285 results, more than I’m willing to sift through. Any way to refine the search? Not that I can see. Okay, I’ll sort by song title and just page down to the “O”s. Clicking on the “Song Title” column header doesn’t work. Off to the right, I notice a dropdown that says “Sort by”. That looks promising. My options are “Relevance”, “Bestselling”, “Price: Low to High”, “Price: High to Low”, “Avg. Customer Review”, and “Release Date”. No “Song Title”, no “Album”, apparently no “Artist” (assuming I searched on just a last name or the name of a song or album).

And like that, I suspect that I won’t be shopping the Amazon MP3 store again any time soon.

What's next, a Gopher client?

Lotus Notes on the iPhone

52 Books in 52 Weeks, 2006 Edition

For the sake of completeness, here is the list of books I read in 2006. I didn’t realize until now that I only managed 48 books that year, which I think says a lot about rules and how they can do more harm than good.

• Colicchio, Tom. Think Like a Chef.
• Bear, Greg. Dead Lines.
• Alder, Ken. The Measure of All Things.
• Wozniak, Steve. iWoz: How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it.
• Spencer-Fleming, Julia. All Mortal Flesh.
• Coupland, Douglas. JPod.
• O’Brien, Cormac. Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Women of the White House.
• Haddon, Mark. A Spot of Bother.
• DeMille, Nelson. The Charm School.
• Connelly, Michael. Void Moon.
• MacDonald, Laura. Curse of the Narrows.
• Barry, Dave. Tricky Business.
• Pelecanos, George P. Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go.
• Pelecanos, George P. Nick’s Trip.
• Pelecanos, George P. A Firing Offense.
• Vowell, Sarah. Assassination Vacation.
• Taber, George M. Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine.
• Oliver, Garrett. The Brewmaster’s Table.
• Noonen, Greg. New Brewing Lager Beer.
• MacFarlane, Alan. The Empire of Tea: The Remarkable History of the Plant that Took Over the World.
• Meloy, Maile. Liars and Saints.
• Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird.
• Child, Lee. The Hard Way.
• Marson, Bonnie. Sleeping with Schubert.
• Pratchett, Terry. Thud!
• Ackerman, Kenneth D. Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield.
• Roach, Mary. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.
• Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses.
• Cody, Diablo. Candy Girl.
• Rucka, Greg. Private Wars.
• Smith, Kyle. Love Monkey.
• Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter.
• Toole, John Kennedy. A Confederacy of Dunces.
• Defrain, Darren. The Salt Palace.
• Tayman, John. The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai.
• King, Stephen. Cell.
• Winchester, Simon. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906.
• Robbins, Tom. Wild Ducks Flying Backward.
• Pratchett, Terry. Going Postal.
• Levitt, Steven D. and Dubner, Stephen J. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.
• Gaiman, Neil. Anansi Boys.
• Hornby, Nick. A Long Way Down.
• Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink.
• Berendt, John. The City of Falling Angels.
• Pelecanos, George. Hard Revolution.
• Story, Rosalyn. More than You Know.
• Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild.
• Grafton, Sue. S is for Silence.

52 Books in 52 Weeks, 2007 Edition

In past years, I’ve tried a number of rules to adhere to the letter of the “52 books in 52 weeks” law. In general, I’ve found they get in the way of just reading. So, this year I lifted most of the restrictions, and decided to start on 1 January, stop on 31 December, and come what may in the middle.

The results were a little surprising.

I passed 52 books somewhere in October or November, I forget which. Even with something of a dry spell towards the end of the year, I still managed to finish my 65th book on 30 December.

Highlights from the year in reading:

• No more Harry Potter books. This is a mixed blessing, as they got so big there at the end that they took a fair chunk of time to read.
• Three more novels by Lee Child from the Jack Reacher series. I feel a little guilty about devoting so much of the year (almost 5%) to a single author, but they’re ripping yarns, and I just can’t help myself.
• Three books with “CIA” in the title. I didn’t notice that until reviewing this list.
• I’m glad I have discovered Angela Nissel. (Come to think of it, her book makes two by panelists from NPR’s quiz show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me.)
• Ken Jennings’ Braniac led me to http://www.ken-jennings.com, which was worth reading the book by itself. (Not that the book wasn’t worth it, too. Highly recommended.) I’ve been subscribed to his Tuesday Trivia email for several months now, and while I don’t compete for the big prizes, I enjoy playing along at home.

Forward-selling for 2008:

• After two years, Sue Grafton finally delivered T is for Trespass. Santa delivered it below the tree. It will be my first read for the year. (By this weekend. I promise.)
• Also on deck currently are The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold (author of The Lovely Bones, which remains one of my favorite books evar) and Heat by Bill Buford (a spontaneous pickup at the library).
• And of course, some fraction of the hundreds of books on my todo list.

The list for 2007, in reverse chronological order:

• Child, Lee. Die Trying.
• Gischler, Victor. Suicide Squeeze.
• Bodanis, David. Electric Universe: The Shocking True Story of Electricity.
• Rankin, Ian. Watchman.
• Couch, Dick. The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident.
• Pratchett, Terry. Making Money.
• Ferguson, Niall. Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire.
• Miller, John Ramsey. Inside Out.
• Finder, Joseph. Paranoia.
• Abbott, Karen. Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America’s Soul.
• Gibson, William. Spook Country.
• Black, Baxter. Hey, Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky?
• Brooks, Max. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.
• Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns.
• Connolly, John. Bad Men.
• Connelly, Michael. The Black Echo.
• Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.
• Plotz, Dave. The Genius Factory.
• Moran, Lindsay. Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy.
• Pelecanos, George. Drama City.
• Reilly, Rick. Hate Mail from Cheerleaders.
• Levinson, Marc. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.
• Bryson, Bill. A Walk in the Woods.
• Child, Lee. Killing Floor.
• Picoult, Jody. Nineteen Minutes.
• Butcher, Jim. White Night.
• Joss, Morag. Funeral Music.
• Budiansky, Stephen. Battle of Wits.
• Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
• Dunning, John. The Bookman’s Promise.
• Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
• Yuan, Michael Juntao and Heute, Thomas. JBoss Seam: Simplicity and Power Beyond Java EE.
• Meltzer, Brad. The Zero Game.
• Pelecanos, George. The Night Gardener.
• Gehtland, Justin; Galbraith, Ben; Almaer, Dion. Pragmatic Ajax.
• Nissel, Angela. The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke.
• Brogan, Jan. A Confidential Source.
• Bodanis, David. E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation.
• Preston, Douglas and Child, Lincoln. Still Life with Crows.
• Smiley, Jane. A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money and Luck.
• Phillips, Scott. Cottonwood.
• Sterling, Bruce. The Zenith Angle.
• Child, Lee. Bad Luck and Trouble.
• Godin, Seth. Small is the New Big, and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas.
• Hiaasen, Carl. Nature Girl.
• Tennant, Alan. On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth With the Peregrine Falcon.
• Lehrer, Kate. Confessions of a Bigamist.
• Viesturs, Ed with Roberts, David. No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World’s Highest Peaks.
• Schwarcz, Joe. The Fly in the Ointment: 70 Fascinating Commentaries on the Science of Everyday Life.
• Krueger, William Kent. Blood Hollow.
• Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail.
• Andrews, Russell. Aphrodite.
• Roth, Philip. The Plot Against America.
• Heffernan, Thomas Farel. Mutiny on the Globe: The Fatal Voyage of Samuel Comstock.
• Johansen, Iris. Fatal Tide.
• Katzenbach, John. The Analyst.
• Gaiman, Neil. Fragile Things.
• Halpern, Jake. Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and other extreme locales.
• Littell, Robert. The Company: A Novel of the CIA.
• Duncan, Dayton. Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip.
• Jensen, Jane. Dante’s Equation.
• Richelson, Jeffrey. The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology.
• Felber, Adam. Schrödinger’s Ball.
• Groneberg, Tom. One Good Horse.
• Jennings, Ken. Braniac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs.

Week 20, Book 19: Private Wars

Rucka, Greg. Private Wars. This was an impulse pickup, as I was scanning the limited checkout shelf at the library. I read Rucka's A Fistful of Rain last year, and I'm a sucker for spy novels. The main character, Tara Chace, is an intelligence operative in the same mold as Tom Clancy's Clark, but more believable. She's also a new mother, and the conflict between the things she loves (her job and her daughter) constantly tears at her. But make no mistake, this is not a touchy-feely book; it's hardcore spy thriller. Private Wars is a sequel to A Gentleman's Game, which I must now add to my todo list. :-)

Week 20, Book 18: Love Monkey

Smith, Kyle. Love Monkey. I was surprised to learn that the television series was based on a book. I was even more surprised to learn that I already had the book on my todo list. I enjoyed this a lot—Kyle Smith's writing reminds me a lot of Nick Hornby's (to whom Smith pays homage by having his protagonist mention a book in which the main character keeps making top 5 lists). I can see why this ended up on TV instead of as a movie; it's similar to About a Boy, and the events of September 11, 2001 work into the background. The ending left me feeling a lot more satisfied than, say, The Salt Palace did.

Week 19, Book 17: Everything Bad is Good For You.

Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. The basic premise is, popular mass media is not dumbing us down, turning us all into the lowest common denominator, but is actually increasing in complexity, forcing us to think harder and better. An interesting read on the heels of Freakonomics and Malcolm Gladwell's books.

Week 18, Book 16: A Confederacy of Dunces

Toole, John Kennedy. A Confederacy of Dunces. It took me a while to get into this one—for the first few days, I felt like I was reading it because I was supposed to, not because I wanted to. The characters were largely unlikeable, and the whole thing read like a farce. Then, I realized that that was the point.