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I had the best Saturday afternoon last weekend. The Max and I pulled up to 18th/Bryant on our bikes, spied a small circle of bibliophiles gathered together, and had surveys thrust into our hands by the Pied Piper of the excursion, Michael Swaine. (Survey questions below, for the curious). Michael...
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Kafka on the Shore
by lz in Reading Archive on 17Aug2008
Murakami is the only writer alive who can snap his fingers and make me go all technicolor dreamy. His ability to create realistic otherworldly civilizations that capture my imagination is unparalleled. He also knows his audience, pandering to readers with the characters' literary discussions and using the private library as...
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Eat This, Not That
by lz in Reading Archive on 16Aug2008
The book begins with the usual list of Foods To Eat Everyday-- spinach, yogurt, tomatoes, carrots, blueberries, black beans, walnuts, oats. So if you're eating those everyday, you probably don't need the rest of the book, which is a guide to what to order at fast food restaurants. A coupla...
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Utterly delightful book until halfway through when the maudlin crept in and tore the plot into bits of paper. Basic story that Christopher lives with his parents in Shanghai until they are kidnapped, and he is shipped off to his aunt's custody in England. Christopher graduates from school, becomes a...
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The Goal
by lz in Reading Archive on 09Aug2008
A fictionalized account of a manufacturing plant manager who faces extinction since his plant is losing money quickly. He turns things around with the help of a Socratic mentor, Jonah, his old physics professor who has common sense ideas about how to turn businesses around. By identifying bottlenecks in his...
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Belgian King Leopold II had a well-tuned business mind. He looked at the Congo region and decided to backhandedly colonize it through deals that created and tapped the rubber plantations. Through his arguably blatant neglect, atrocities were committed in the region-- hands chopped from living people as evidence of corpses...
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A friend at work recently had her first child, and I organized a massive book donation that will last the family for years, in lieu of flowers that will wilt after a week. After polling the office to gather everyone's favorites from childhood, I came up with the list below....
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The Informant
by lz in Reading Archive on 31Jul2008
Over the past week, I've been lugging this 600+ page book around the city, sneaking glimpses at it whenever I could, in waiting rooms and during lunch breaks, wishing that this week's busy social calendar didn't get in the way of my devouring this book. Last night, I stayed up...
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Resource Wars
by lz in Reading Archive on 23Jul2008
It all boils down to oil and water. Although the two elements don't mix well, they do combine as necessary but limited resources which the 21st century needs for physical and economic survival. This was a fantastic, pre-9/11 look at the global situation, which accurately predicts the US invasion of...
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NYTimes blogger lists the best business books, and I'm no snob, I'll give them a whirl! Expect to see several of these reviewed in the coming weeks. His list and comments, in no particular order: “Liar’s Poker,” by Michael Lewis (even though I’ve since become convinced that the anecdote that...
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Essay collection curated by City Lights detailing the history of San Francisco's growth and political bent. Filled with good stuff, from articles on the horrible "weeding" done at the SF public library to fit into the new building with fancy computer equipment that quickly went out of date, to an...
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A beautiful and quick read; condenses the 3 year siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s into a month of fiction. True stories inspire main plot points, like the cellist who watches 22 of his friends and neighbors die when a shell lands on them whilst waiting in a line for...
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"Just be different," Athena tells us. This spiritual character loses herself in dance and calligraphy, filling up her blank spaces with activity, and eventually discovering the Mother spirit, then teaching people how they could find the Mother as well. An orphan adopted in Lebanon, daughter of gypsies, brought up in...
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Three Cups of Tea
by lz in Reading Archive on 29Jun2008
Climber fails to climb K-2, gets lost on his way down the mountain and wanders into a remote village where the people treat him well. Climber vows to return and build a school for the village, returns to US, raises money through various letters and phone calls, discovers that computers...
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Breathtakingly beautiful, simply amazing, read it, read it, read it! I am exhausted right now and will likely not do it justice, but this is the best book I've read in months. Story is of an ancient languages (Greek, Latin) teacher who simply gets up and walks out of his...
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Drown
by lz in Reading Archive on 18Jun2008
Autobiographical stories from the author's youth growing up in the Dominican Republic, migrating to the US at age 9. The complexity of his father's abandonment and eventual return (and eventual re-abandonment). The stories show a real side of immigration, never a false note ringing. Good writing, evocative. Diaz won a...
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