Summer always affords good book reading opportunities, and I have bolted through a few in the past month. My first journey was into The Change with “Dies The Fire”, a sci-fi novel taking place in 1998 from moments before a cataclysmic event which renders all engines, electronics and explosives useless. The aftermath is brutal; a struggle to survive in a suddenly lawless world, described precisely by S.M. Stirling. I look forward to continuing this series… “The Beach” by Alex Garland is another world of savagery that festers then erupts on a utopian tropical wonderland and was a huge challenge to stop reading at any time.

A great quick read: Food Rules by Michael Pollan. It sets forth the smartest guidelines I’ve ever seen to eating well. All 64 “rules” are so commonsensical and simple, shaping a diet that would be so much healthier than what most Americans eat. Unsurprisingly, the emphasis is on old world eating habits, citing French and Italian diets (recent personal confirmation) and stuff your great-grandmother would recognize as “real food”… Even if you end up breaking a few rules now and then (daily for me thus far) the book offers a great look at our obviously problematic food supply and may inspire more awareness of what are really eating… Not always pretty.

And to David Foster Wallace. Thank you… Your writing astounds me. Who can delve the truth like you? You write so much about every detail and yet are so economical with words that explode with meaning. Your media report about media reporting McCain2000 is what it is. We all know it but are unable to say it like you. Flying back from Europe, I had tears streaming down my face from laughter at your piece about GRAMMAR! Who knew SNOOTs were so funny? And today, reading a 1990 piece on American Fiction and Television that demonstrates the alienating loneliness and self-mocking nature of pop culture while alluding to a futuristic “net” of telecomputers that had the potential to break the entertainment monopoly and “free Joe Briefcase from passive dependence on his furniture”, I am thrown back in time to my first interactions with The Net on BBSs and email, all communative in nature, and how amazingly revolutionary that was, even if I didn’t understand the larger, 20-year context then… You did! Anyway, I’m sorry you’ll never read this because you killed yourself but I hope you somehow know how much I appreciate your work.

Alaina downloaded “Consider the Lobster” on her kindle, for which I traded my old-school paperback. Books Be Gone! The experience of reading this collection of non-fiction was enhanced by the e-reader; DFW is a copious footnoter and big-word user so the ability to bounce between the text, footnote and dictionary (which still lacks a good number of words he uses) is easier on the Kindle, although it is even easier on MY IPHONE, on which I just downloaded all of Alaina’s Kindle books (Twilight Series next?) and another DFW, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”, and am enjoying with touch screen efficiency. Is it different from holding a book? Yes. Is the information contained the same? Yes. Does it sometimes run out of batteries? Yes. Do I love having Infinite Jest in my pocket? Yes.

Caitlin sent me a link to an interview with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com discussing his upcoming book. She wrote this note:

This interview reminded me of you because you’re happy and enjoy spreading happiness to others. That’s why I love ya!!

That is probably the nicest compliment I’ve ever gotten! What else is there besides happiness? It is the only real currency… all else is just a means of achieving it. And who better to spread this message than one of the richest men in the world? He gets it; he has accomplished more in the technology and business world than most and has virtually unlimited wealth, yet his overarching theme is the pursuit of happiness. His philosophy is based on culture and promoting positive experiences, for vendor, customer and employee, being transparent with everybody involved in the process, thus building trust and a stable, self-sustaining relationship. Win-win-win. The game is not about maximizing profits, but about maximizing happiness. He values friendship and cultivates his “tribe” with a party-hearty lifestyle, fueled by vodka, redbull and other assorted happy-makers. Being connected, both to people and to a larger purpose in life, is essential in the quest for a life fulfilled.

The link included an offer to receive an advance copy of the book, to be published on June 7, for bloggers. That’s me! They sent two copies, with the suggestion of a giveaway, and so I will give a copy to the first two comments with an idea for how we can spread Supergood! culture and maximize happiness in a new way.

I was an Economics major in college and anytime I tell people that they find it funny–probably because my job is playing music with kids instead of making money with money. I never had any interest in joining the corporate workforce but still found Econ the most interesting department at Middlebury. It incorporated so much about humanity, from history to psychology to our core values. The focus was usually money, but the how and why made the topic endlessly engaging. Stephen Levitt is an economist who brings the study into new realms; he sees the discipline as general tools to study human behavior rather than simply the flow of money. In his book Freakonomics, he tackles a wide variety of subjects, from the somewhat misaligned incentives between real-estate agents and the sellers they represent, to the corporate structure of a crack gang, to the sad realities of the American school system and the relative lack of influence that parents actually exert on their childrens’ lives. He writes in a refreshingly politically incorrect way, demonstrating that statistics often counter conventional wisdom and shedding light on subjects we only think we understand.
I then picked up Moneyball, a book I’ve been meaning to read for years, which looks in-depth at the subject of baseball and the shifting status quo in our evaluation of players and potential. Again, statistics are the epicenter of this change, moving from a talent scout’s subjective interpretaion of skills to a numbers-based approach that has proven successful in this expensive market.
Both books use the tools created by economists to describe the world we live in and enlighten our perceptions of the untruths of conventional wisdom.

After six months of Infinite Jest, it was nice to speed through Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” in three days. It is the polar opposite of IJ in so many ways; staccato sentences with stark descriptions in contrast to epic details of minutiae, a barren world versus an oversaturated one, a simple story of survival against a complex web of culture. Despite their fundamental differences, both books are amazing, capturing the essence of humanity from different angles. The Road is a journey though a post-apocalyptic world, where life has been all but completely destroyed, and a father and son’s struggle to survive the desolation. It is terrifying to imagine this world beyond hope, where survival becomes a question of both how and, more devastatingly, why? As I take stock now of all my worldly possesions, I realize that in this pray-we-may-never-see-it world, everything beyond cans of food would be rendered instantly useless in the game of survival, which I would play only to carry on the spirit of Love.

The book turns out to be depressingly finite. At 1000 pages, it took me about six months to hack my way through, and still I feel like there isn’t enough — I am cruelly left hanging (as was David Foster Wallace…) — as it ends without any resolution. The story is bizarre and compelling from the first few pages and weaves its way through so many interconnected lives of greatness and depravity, but feels after the last page turn as if we have just reached an intermission… I have previously read D.F.W.’s “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men”, which is a collection of short stories, some of which do have a resolution and some that do not, but no matter the length or narrative conclusion, his writing stands as the best use of the English language that I have ever read. His descriptive abilities are frighteningly and hilariously good, with every word purposed so perfectly and sentences that defy the limitations of printed ink to elicit an imagined visual purer than video. Life is more complicated than a neat finishing tie-up and every word, every sentence, every paragraph that we write in our own lives is infinitely more important than how it ends. His writing betrays a mind that is simultaneously gifted and cursed, picking out every minute detail and analyzing it endlessly, typically with a kaliedescope of colors that blends into a  dull-gray, which must have made his life ultimately unlivable. While we can lament the elimination of his own map, we can be grateful that he was able to focus his thoughts into art for at least some time, producing a body of work that is invaluable to our culture.