Monday Chart: Domestic Vacation Delusion

Happy New Year

A small town once hired a famous landscape architect to plan a park for them. He agreed as long as he had complete control and as long as the plans could be kept sealed until his death. He set out planning the park and worked with a large crew to create it. The park was quite lovely, and the townspeople really enjoyed it. In the center of it, though, stood a small tree of a variety no one had ever seen. The famous landscape architect had come in at night with one crew member and planted it. Over the years, the tree grew, and it got quite ugly. It's foliage grew out in a lumpy, uneven pattern. Landscapers who did such a nice job tending every other plant in the park could never quite reign in this one tree. The townspeople were very curious as to what kind of tree it was, but the landscape architect would not reply to their letters of inquiry except once to say "you will find out upon my death". They tolerated the tree and the mystery for a few more years until news of the landscape architect's death appeared in the newspaper. They hurried to the town historical society and unsealed the park plans. Spreading a large map out on a table, they located the center of the park and saw this notation where the tree now stood: Nappy Yew Here!

Books of '11: recommendations

 After saving you from bad books yesterday, today I recall two of the best books I read this year.  I enjoyed both of these a ton.  They're the kind of books that inspire the reader to make time to read them rather than do other things.

Best of the year: fiction


The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet, David Mitchell, 2010


I picked up this book because it made a lot of NPR 10-best lists fro 2010.  That proved to be a reliable recommendation.  I especially appreciated the quality, long-form novel because I started reading it at the beginning of a 27-hour flight to Asia.  The story’s setting in turn of the 19th century Nagasaki felt appropriate despite the fact that my destination was Vietnam.  Although the plot  keeps the reader interested, that setting in Nagasaki and its Dutch trading post is pleasingly unfamiliar.  Although I have no way of judging its accuracy, it felt historically plausible and educational.  We meet the title character when he is a newly-arriving clerk at the trading post ad follow him as he navigates the machinations of both the half-marooned population of the trading post and the complicated politics of closed, Shogunal Japan.  This is a page turner that achieved an all-too-rare feat - making me wish I didn’t have to participate in real life so I could have more time to just read the book.


Best of the year: non-fiction


The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, Elna Baker, 2009


I heard Elna Baker on an incredible live episode of the incredible Marc Maron podcast.  That appearance came a few years after this book was published, but it made me very curious to read it.  In this memoir - yes, it's a memoir with that crazy long title - Baker details her life as a Mormon in New York City.  Baker is a standup comedienne, and the book is funny, but that's not what made it so gripping for me.  Baker details her struggles and questions with her Mormon faith in the midst of her lively social life in New York City.  Mormonism as much as any other faith enforces social norms of behavior that are understood to manifest in a long line of "no's".  No drinking, no drugs, no sex.  Baker shares incredibly frankly her hopes and fears in relation to remaining committed to her church while being pulled toward life outside of it.  The real action comes (not really spoiling here) when she meets an atheist whom she really, really likes.  Her family members definitely play their roles in her narrative a la David Sedaris; she lives with her older, more beautiful sister in New York.  Her parents sound like generous, awesome people.  I've been highly recommending this book for its honesty and page-turning narrative.

Books of '11: anti-recommendations

While it's important to recommend good books to each other, it may be more important that we save each other from bad books.  Tomorrow, I'll recommend two books that I really enjoyed this year, but today, I'm going to try to save you from wasting time on books that aren't worth reading.


Worst of the year: fiction

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Daniyal Mueenuddin, 2009

First of all, who gives a rip about stories in a collection being linked?  This book falls into that rash currently afflicting literary fiction, the linked story collection.  As LitCritHulk tweeted: "HULK SMASH TREND OF HIP NOVELISTS WRITE 'LINKED' SHORT STORIES AND CALL IT NOVEL. YOU WANT WRITE SHORT STORIES, FINE. IT NOT A ####ING NOVEL"  The stories in this collection link together very tenuously with the names of some characters repeating.  They jump around in time so that we're to understand we're reading about a couple of generations of the same family, but the fact that one character is another character's son has so little bearing on a particular story that it doesn't matter.  I fail to see the point.  But that's not the big problem.  The big problem is that more than half of the stories in this collection have the same plot.  No joke.  One story in which a woman of modest means decides to "give herself" sexually to a financially successful older man only to have it end badly when he returns to the wife of his youth might have been interesting.  Six in a row can only be considered bizarre.  It's a shame because the stories at the back end of the collection when he sheds the single plot are actually pretty good.



Worst of the year: non-baseball non-fiction


Sex on the Moon, Ben Mezrich, 2011


I read at least one baseball book a year.  This isn't one of them, but it's one you might fall for - as I did - because of the hype.  Don't do it.  The most audacious heist in history?  Weeeeellllll.  I loved Mezrich's books about the MIT blackjack team, and I wanted to love this book.  The story is artfully told, which is nice, until you want to figure out how the thing actually went down.  That part of the book is the sketchiest.  It's difficult to read a book about someone being so deceitful.  I found it uncomfortable and a little stressful, like watching a cringe humor sitcom.  Also, the way he got caught seems so obvious in retrospect.  The book shows what happens to this person whose fantasies cloud his reality; a promising future gets lopped off really quickly through extremely bad judgment.  Woo hoo?  Not really.


Worst of the year: baseball non-fiction


The Code: Baseball's Unwritten Rules and Its Ignore-at-Your-Own-Risk Code, Ross Bernstein, 2008


Although this book was published in 2008, it started popping up various places in my environment in late 2010. The title and premise rock. The book...not so much. Start with the author bragging about the 30 sports books he's written in the last 20 years. That reminds me of a Pennsylvania winery I visited that produced 54 wines, none of them quite drinkable. The good Mr. Bernstein takes the volume approach. He also starts the book with three forewords by current or former baseball players. I love baseball and baseball players, but three forewords on the topic of the game's unwritten code by player types produce an unappealing drumbeat of repetition about respect and not throwing at guys' heads. It's not as if the book itself isn't littered with player quotes. Bernstein interviewed lots of people. While I admire his hard work, i wish he hadn't showed quite so much of it. The narrative, especially early on, is interrupted as much as five times on a page by block quotes in gray boxes. Obviously, players, managers and umpires have to be the source, but take a little more time and weave them into a narrative. Some of the block quotes are more than a page long. For good measure, he gives the last word to a player, block quoting Dave Winfield, saying something that doesn't really put a button on all that went before. I don't know if it's good or bad policy, but Bernstein saves his best stuff for last. The stuff about throwing at guys gets dull and goes on a long time. Summary: throw at guys when they "disrespect" you or a teammate or the game; don't throw at guys' heads. Second summary: throwing at a guy is easy, and it is really difficult. The stuff about bench-clearing brawls is better. Where he really shines, though, is in talking about stealing signs. The best part of that material, though, focuses less on the code and more on how signs work, which I, as a fan, didn't really know. I wanted more out of this book. Perhaps John Feinstein could rewrite it from Bernstein's notebook (which it felt like I was reading anyway) and come up with a worthy book.

Sunday Haiku: Christmas Card Envy

Facebook posts about
my Christmas card make friends who 
don't get one jealous.

Overheard 2011 Runners Up Volume 2

In addition to the final installment of outtakes from Overheard 2011, I've included the outtakes from our Christmas Card photo session.  We're very grateful to Paige's mother, a talented photographer who captures this image for us every year, and to Paige's father, a notable goof who makes funny sounds and faces behind the camera so that Paige knows where to look and smile.  Well, he does that for someone in our family; it might not be Paige.  Actually, Paige had a killer migraine during this year's photo shoot, so she gets the Christmas Card medal of honor for smiling through the pain.

Bringing the Playmobil baby Jesus with a gold cup on his head

T: Look what happened to the baby Jesus.

P: He got a cup on his head?

T: Yeah, a guy dropped a cup and it got on his head, and he got the blood of a new government on his head.

P: The blood of the new government?

T: Yeah.  From God.

Teddy malapropisms:
shoulder = shurdle
sauerkraut = sourcrap

C: I can't get my coat unzipped
T (stricken): It will be on him forever!

T: When I grow up, I'm gonna buy a Camaro or a Mustang.
C: If he can afford it.
T: Yeah, I can afford a Camaro.
C: Camaros are pretty expensive.
T: OK, then I'll get a Mustang.
C: Mustangs are still pretty expensive.  Why don't you just go with a Chrysler 300?

After he presented mommy & daddy with keychains with his self-portrait on them:
T: "Mom, if you miss me today, you can look at your keys.  And then you won't."

T: A dentist is an eye doctor.

C: No, an eye doctor is not a pediatrician.

C: Dad, what’s an eye doctor called?

J: An ophthalmologist.

T: A dentist is a teeth doctor, right, Charlie?

Overheard 2011 Runners up Volume 1

It's that time of year again.  We've sent out our Christmas letter with the best of the best funny or surprising boy quotes in it.  As in past years, there was more there than we could fit.  Here are some that were nearly good enough to make the cut.

Explaining that his belly stopped hurting:

T: It said, “Oh!  I guess the kid doesn’t like this.”  And it turned back easy.

When the subject of marriage came up (extended version, longer than in the Christmas letter)

T: I’m probably going to live with some dudes when I grow up.

J: Which dudes?

C: Probably Rowan.

T: Rowan has a cut-off toe.

On a schedule conflict between a friend’s birthday party and the Harvard-Yale game:

P: I think a friend’s party is more important than a football game.

C: But this isn’t just a football game.  It’s a traditional Ivy League rivalry.  It’s been going on since the beginning of college football, and this is like the 143^rd time.