Author: John Roberts

Enjoyed cheering Matt on tonight as he turned 28 and seeing various other friends. More broadly, this celebration reminded me that sitting in my inbox (for too long now) are plans to re-start my own chronicle, right here with my WordPress install. Lots of other living to do, but I miss writing, too.

I made a purchase of some shipping boxes from ULINE.com today. There’s a nice touch, captured in this screenshot: an opt-in for getting an email reminder to repeat this order in the future. Set to one month in the future, the date is easily configurable. Well done, especially for a site that sells consumables.

I didn’t set a reminder, despite my appreciation of the design.

I read the excerpt of Grant Wahl’s article in Sports Illustrated first. After that appetizer, I was grateful to my brother for providing the full book of The Beckham Experiment.

Not much to add here, so many months after the fact, except that I’m amazed the Galaxy played so well this season, with Beckham and Donovan finding a way to play the game and put the previous year — with all its now-public dirty laundry — behind them. True professionals, after all.

(This is part of my end-of-the-year rush to capture my major media consumption before the year actually comes to a close.)

Deflating the myth of rational choice, Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide runs through the research about decision-making and decisions, and comes out with the perhaps refreshing news that we go with our gut feelings most of the time. Depending on the type of decision we’re making, that emotional tilt may be helpful — or even necessary — or it may mislead, but it’s 100% real.

Lehrer writes differently from Malcom Gladwell (to Lehrer’s credit), but this kind of science survey falls firmly into the same genre. I’m quite sure every publisher has an eye out for similar work. A Lehrer strength, I found, is that he’s stayed in the same area of neuroscience and its implications for several articles and books. How We Decide illuminates one area of the study of the mind, both biological foundations and real-world actions. But there’s plenty of other tacks to take, and Lehrer’s demonstrated fascination should lead to more shared insights. I’ll be following his blog from now on.

(This is part of my end-of-the-year rush to capture my major media consumption before the year actually comes to a close.)

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was Cory Doctorow’s first novel. More famous (to me) for being given away for free in many digital formats, Down and Out appeared to me in physical form, as a paperback I picked up off a neighborhood book table this fall.

Imaginative story, more of a novella than a novel, this story — like most science fiction — depends on its readers being willing to extrapolate in a few different ways from where we are today. In a down economy, we can only dream of a world where Whuffie (akin to egoboo) is the scorecard instead of money and material needs. Doctorow’s world is that dream, but he demonstrates it’s not all pleasant musing. A reasonable read, if not a classic.

(This is part of my end-of-the-year rush to capture my major media consumption before the year actually comes to a close.)

While I panned In Danger’s Path, I enjoyed The Hostage from W.E.B. Griffin for one reason: I listened to it. As an unabridged audiobook which doesn’t demand much attention, nor require a constant memory of the previous character “development,” The Hostage swallowed many boring driving hours for me this summer and fall. I have other audio books I’d prefer to catch up with, but actual physical CDs are hard to beat in the cars I drive.

Still, I would not go out of my way to listen to W.E.B Griffin again.

(This is part of my end-of-the-year rush to capture my major media consumption before the year actually comes to a close.)

Another one from my brother, The Associate by John Grisham, doesn’t stick in my mind at all. I know I read it this summer, but until I dug up the website right now, I didn’t remember a fraction of the story.

Now that I’ve refreshed my memory, well, it’s an airplane book, with a few hints of the delicious fun of The Firm and others, but not quite there. I suppose the best part is that Grisham keeps writing, and isn’t paralyzed by trying to match some of his early success.

(This is part of my end-of-the-year rush to capture my major media consumption before the year actually comes to a close.)

Until this summer, I never picked up any of the “50 million copies in print” of W.E.B. Griffin’s novels. In Danger’s Path is one of The Corps series, and the American military in World War II is able to get some people and radios into the deserts of China. There’s a lot along the way, but honestly, I finished this one (on August 15th) only because I’m stubborn about finishing books I start.

(This is part of my end-of-the-year rush to capture my major media consumption before the year actually comes to a close.)

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson lay around the house for years before I read it this summer.

The subtitle “Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America” underlines the book’s strength and weakness. Larson is telling two stories, and I found his weaving a bit crude and forced. The first story, the history of the 1893 Columbian Exposition from inspiration to remarkable execution, fascinated me. The second story, bringing to life an early serial killer, is all too modern, despite the late 19th century Chicago setting. The urban growth goosed by the Exposition may have also given the murderer an increasing supply of victims, but I didn’t find them more than coincidental.

As a side note, which reinforces the point, Larson plays with the story of the Exposition’s main attraction. I didn’t know the Ferris wheel came from the 1893 fair, as a response to the Eiffel Tower of the last world fair. It sounds remarkable, but teasing out the punchline made the story a bit too much of a gotcha, as if Larson were revealing the #1 hit in a countdown of the year’s best.

Telling a great popular history is nothing to be ashamed of. Larson didn’t need to tart up the tale with a police procedural. Despite my concerns over the competing stories, I enjoyed the event enough that this general topic remains on my “to read” list.

(This is part of my end-of-the-year rush to capture my major media consumption before the year actually comes to a close.)

I should be ashamed to admit that I read Ted Bell’s Pirate. And I am, mildly. Still, I bounce around in my reading, and candy has its place among the food groups, too (or something like that). If I’m going to record the books I’ve read, I want to capture all of it. I certainly don’t want to make the mistake of reading this one again. A weak James Bond wannabe tale, Pirate doesn’t have much beyond the clichés. Oh well. I won’t pick up any of Bell’s other single-word titles.

(This is part of my end-of-the-year rush to capture my major media consumption before the year actually comes to a close.)