After a relaxing 8 days off and some nice family visiting we are all excited to get back into our routines (although Julie has been working with only 4 days vacation). Before I get into my Winter Break books, some quick thoughts as we begin 2009:
Facebook: These lazy days have convinced me that we should try to implement the Facebook/Blackboard Sync Application. Learning is social. And I enjoyed sort of loosely keeping up with colleagues and friends throughout the vacation via Facebook. The next course that I teach I plan to ask the students to all get Facebook accounts and update their status every time they do something in Blackboard (blog, post a discussion post etc.) - should be a good experiment.
Another quick plug for the Facebook App Visual Bookshelf. This app lets me see what my folks are reading, what they want to read, and what they think about what they have read. I hope this application gets better - and I hope more folks take the time to use it - as the most important book reviewers are friends. Visual Bookshelf could also be used nicely in a class context, requiring students to review course books.
Winter Break Reading: Before jumping into my Winter break criminal reading spree some thoughts on reading. A couple of Facebook friends (Dave, Michael) have asked about my reading habits, commenting on the Facebook feeds that pop-up when I finish a book. I burned through a bunch of beach (or couch) paper books this break, part of my 2009 resolution to read more fiction (actually the resolution was "quality" fiction - but you know how resolutions go). Turns out the conditions were right for some reading - which for me include:
- Not having cable/satellite TV: We get plenty of screen time with our 6 at a gulp Netflix subscription (watched American Teen with the girls and Julie last night - fascinating to hear pre-teens talk about teen life) What I miss in lacking normal TV is watching sports. At age 39 I've maybe watched, say, 80,000 hours of sports on TV. Maybe that is enough. Growing up watching the Celtics win championships in the mid-1980s it is hard to miss the current great team, and I sorely long for Sunday football, but all those hours that used to be taken up with TV sports are not mostly reading hours.
- Not blogging: I took the vacation off from blogging, which meant taking the vacation off from reading RSS feeds on education, technology and their intersection. I tend to catch-up on my Web professional reading at night, and then blog what I find most interesting. so without RSS reading and blogging I had more time.
- Multi-taksing: The non-fiction I read (reviewed below) was consumed via audio - read at Dartmouth hockey and basketball games, on the treadmill, or doing dishes. True happiness is bringing the girls to hockey game, having them disappear with their friends (returning every 40 minutes or so for more money for the snack bar), letting me relax to hockey and an audiobook in peace.
Back to the Books:
First the fun (beach/couch) fiction. All these books are courtesy of Steven King's list of best books of 2008 (the ones now in Paperback). Some of these books were just too scary and/or violent for my tastes (which I should have expected in taking a list from Steven King) - but they were all well written and distracting.
The best of these, and the one author I will get all his books, is Joseph Wambaugh. I loved Hollywood Station. Character driven police procedural from an insider (he is an alumni of the LAPD) - a great find.
My quest now is to find some good quality fiction that I can convince Julie to read with me - so we can book club. My favorite fiction writers include Ford, Russo, McEwan, Chabon, Roth, McCarthy, Price, Perrotta, Powers, Hornby and Wolfe. I'll buy whatever these guys write (and I realize with some concern that they are all guys). I'm hoping for recommendations to expand my circle of regular authors.
Some quality fiction that has worked well for book-clubbing with Julie are novels like The Emperors Children (Messud), Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Pessl), and Intuition (Goodman). Any suggestions? To follow-up on my 2009 quality fiction resolution I ordered some paperback books from Amazon that I hope fit the bill. These include: Theft by Peter Carey, The Bad Girl by by Mario Vargas Llosa, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, and I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle. Reviews to come.
Reviews:
This winter break was all about crime and money - maybe because my real life has so little of either. For family, friends and colleagues - fair warning that I'll be trying to talk to all of you about the sordid details and political economy of organized crime (and maybe the history of the bond market). My apologies in advance - but these were some great books:
McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny
Did you know that organized crime is responsible for an estimated 15 to 20% of the world GDP (counting tax evasion)? Or that narcotics accounts for about 70% of criminal profits, with energy, guns, prostitution, and gambling making up the bulk of the rest? I didn't know any of this - and I'm not sure I'll be able to think about "the economy" ever again in the same way. Written by a journalist, but with an insiders perspective and a novelists sense of character and pacing, McMafia is one of the best books I read in 2008.
Grade: A
Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System by Roberto Saviano
Six seasons of The Sopranos, plus three Godfather movies and a bunch of organized crime books have pretty much formed my views of the mafia. Organized crime as entertainment. Gomorrah tells what happens when organized crime infiltrates every aspect of the economy and social life, as it has done in Southern Italy. Saviano, a native son of Naples, provides an insider personal account of the social and human costs of living in a mafia dominated culture. The incredible levels of violence and corruption spawned by mafia control are shocking and eye opening, even more so given this story is playing out in the heart of Western Europe. Not a hopeful book, not an entertaining book, but a fascinating exposition of a world both unknown and hidden to outsiders. An excellent companion to McMafia, filling in the details to Glenny's broad outlines. This book was apparently a sensation when published in Italy, although the author has had to go into hiding because of death threats. Are there places in the U.S. where organized crime continues exert significant control in aspects of the economy?
Grade: B+
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
We are all self-appointed experts when it comes to money (or at least real estate), but none of us really knows much history. For if we knew the history of booms and busts, bonds and equities, risk and insurance then we may all be a little less likely to jump into the latest bubble, and a little more likely to question our own "expertise". I admire Ferguson for taking on a big topic, and for his willingness to provide a grand sweep of history that reflects and helps us understand our current recession. The book was apparently written to accompany a documentary series, and it certainly reads that way. This is good and bad...and the narrative moves along quickly and big lessons are drawn - while at times leaving the reader wanting more analysis. One question that the author poses keeps coming back to me - have we been living through a "super bubble" from the 1950s to today, which will see a slow deflation in our lifetimes as property values stagnate and China is no longer willing to fund our consumption through their savings?
Grade: B+
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