11/22/63 by Stephen King

I have mixed feelings about this time travel epic. On the one hand, it's hard to shake the feeling that this would have worked just as well -- if not better -- as a 10,000 word Galaxy novelette. On the other hand, that shorter version would have left out all of my favorite parts.

Jake Epping is an English teacher who has learned about a hole in the past, one that will take him back to a particular day in 1958. King skips over a lot of preliminaries by having another character who's spent years journeying to the past and knows The Rules, so before long Epping is off on an ambitious mission: live in the past for five years so he can save President Kennedy from Lee Harvey Oswald.

The living in the past part is great. King briefly acknowledges the flaws of the time, but this book is a love letter to life in the early sixties -- which was a pretty good time if you had good health, the right skin color, and plenty of money. Jake has all three. There are some wonderful supporting characters, and I was perfectly content to live small-town life with Jake and his friends.

Eventually, though, you have to get back to The Mission. And that's suspenseful in parts. Jake has the advantage of foreknowledge, but the past does not want to be changed, and it does a pretty good job of trying to kill him. But The Mission is never as interesting as the side trips, and the final explanation for what's going on is a bit of a cop-out, invoking vast cosmic powers in what to this point has been a very human story.

A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest by William deBuys
A thoughtful and disturbing portrait of how the ecology of the Southwest is changing. What I really like is his combination of present-day reporting and historical perspective, showing how shifts in the climate impacted the Pueblo and other early residents of the region.


Four Kitchens: My Life Behind the Burner in New York, Hanoi, Tel Aviv, and Paris by Lauren Shockey
A recent culinary school graduate spends a year as an apprentice in four very different kitchens around the world. I can't shake the feeling that she set out on this grand tour with writing a book in mind, but it's still an entertaining portrait of people, locales, and good food.




Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway's Remarkable First Year by Glenn Stout
A comprehensive history of the building of Fenway Park, the 1912 Red Sox, and that year's slugfest -- literally, the players were hitting each other -- of a World Series. It's a good read, especially for Sox fans, though I sometimes wondered if absolutely every detail had to be in there. Then again, Stout apparently has been working on the book for two decades, so you can forgive him for wanting to get it all in.

My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store by Ben Ryder Howe

Ben Ryder Howe's memoir of helping buy and run a Korean deli reads like it should be a movie (and apparently it was, at least for a while, though the project seems to have gone dormant). A WASPy editor working for George Plimpton, Howe is married to a daughter of Korean immigrants who has decided to help her mother own a deli of her own. While Howe's mother-in-law is a lifelong retail expert, Howe and his wife are not, and they're quickly in over their heads.

Howe's struggles with the deli brings back memories -- some fond -- of my own shopkeeping, but his Korean family are the stars here. He does his best to show what makes them tick, even though he doesn't fully understand them himself, and the story of his mother-in-law's life is fascinating. He also brings out the personality of New York, especially late-night New York when the expressway is empty and everyone still out on the street is probably a little bit crazy. The story sometimes seems a little too cinematic, but it's a compelling read.

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard

Journalist Colin Woodard has a very different take on American history. Instead of chasing great men or reporting the doings of the federal government, he's looked at the last 400 years in terms of eleven broad demographic groups that have colonized different regions of the United States. According to him, the Civil War wasn't the North against the South, it was the northern alliance of Yankeedom, the Midlands, and New Netherland against the southern alliance of the Deep South and Tidewater, with Greater Appalachia playing both sides against each other.

He oversimplifies a bit. There are bits where I've read enough of the relevant history -- the story of Powhaten, for instance -- to be certain that he's glossing over details that might undermine his case. He also gets so focused on proving the regional differences that he ignores the many times we've pulled together as a larger nation.

That said, his "eleven nations" viewpoint provides a very good lens for looking at the social contradictions and conflicts in American life. He may be a little gloomy in his outlook -- he seems to think some of the differences are irreconcilable -- but I think this book can contribute to understanding our regional differences and figuring out how to make them into national strengths.

Investing in Energy: A Primer on the Economics of the Energy Industry by Gianna Bern

Well, this certainly reminded me of why I prefer lighter reading. As primers on the economics of the energy industry go, this is... just as dry as you might expect.

That said, Bern explains an immensely complex set of businesses with great clarity. This is useful background material for me, and I'm glad I took the time to force feed it into my brain.

The Obamas by Jodi Kantor

NYT reporter Kantor tells a sympathetic story about the Obamas and how they've adapted to the Presidency and the White House. Personally, I'm amazed that everyone living there doesn't go stark, staring mad. The best analogy for their experience is probably that it's like living in an armor-plated goldfish bowl, with snipers swimming around at the top.

Michelle Obama is the focus here, and Kantor does a good job of contrasting her professionalism with her husband's populism. They seem to complement each other well, especially when her practicality keeps him from chasing down the rabbit holes of theory and idealism. (Hm. I seem to have some familiarity with that kind of relationship myself.)

That said, another thing that comes out is that the Obamas are pretty insular -- uncomfortable with small talk and gatherings outside a small circle of friends -- and that they've paid a heavy political price for their unwillingness to embrace the social side of Washington DC. (That feels familiar, too.) It's annoying to think that the nation might be better off if the President hosted a few cocktail parties and spent more time golfing with senators, but that's politics for you.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

Charles Yu the up-and-coming young writer tells the story of Charles Yu, a science fictional timeline customer service agent / repairman who lives in a couple of very limited universes.

I have a lot of respect for the ambition of the novel, and for the fact that Yu somehow kept the whole complicated mess of his setting reasonably understandable. But it's all a bit precious and overwrought. Yu is working out the kind of stuff that probably seems really important when you're in your twenties, but from my mid-forties perspective I can't help but look at him and say, "Dude, life gets MUCH worse than that."

Fire Monks: Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara by Colleen Morton Busch

Turns out Zen monks make excellent firefighters, as demonstrated when the monks of Tassajara Monastery had to face the California wildfires of 2008. Necessarily a little slow at times, since it took several weeks for the fire to arrive and most of the time was spent preparing and waiting. But there are some nice insights into the role awareness plays in the Zen, firefighting, and life in general.

WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson

I'm doing a lot of work in Wordpress these days, so I figured it would be a good idea to get better oriented. Turns out I've already learned most of what is in the book, because Wordpress is so simple that it's hard to fill a standard Dummies book up with useful tips and tricks. That said, I appreciate the way the book lays it all out and makes it easy to fill in the remaining gaps in my knowledge.

On a more personal note, this is the first book I've read cover-to-cover on Kindle software, and the first ebook I've borrowed from the library. Technology marches on!

The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth

"For 10 years I have longed for normalcy but it does not seem so destined. My generation has already lived through war, boom and panic, but evidently we still have some excitement ahead of us." -- from the diary of Benjamin Roth, September 12, 1939.

Benjamin Roth was a young lawyer in Youngstown, Ohio when the Great Depression broke out. In 1931, he began keeping a diary, recording the economic chaos around him and trying to make sense of it. His story is dry, dispassionate, and fascinating.

I can't help but read this through the last few years, and a few things jump out as a result. We do seem to be following the same pattern of events, with our current bumpy recovery feeling a lot like the mid-thirties. (If the parallels hold, we have some more hard times ahead.) But I can also see how much worse things were the last time around, when the credit system was frozen and there was simply no money to be had. It becomes a lot easier to justify the bailout efforts when you see what happened to a financial system that was allowed to collapse.