I‘m going to look at an apartment in Decatur tomorrow morning, which I’m obviously excited about. The only real downside I can think of compared to my current living arrangement is I’ve been getting a ton of reading done on the bus ride from Scarietta to Midtown. With nothing else to do but read on the bus, it’s easy to keep the discipline necessary to sit still that long. Without that 45-minute commute two or three days per week (some nights I stay at the GDGF’s place and don’t leave Midtown), I worry I’ll relapse into barely reading at all in my spare time — especially with that shiny new TV I just bought from Big Box to distract me. So it goes. Anyway, here are the books I’ve managed to knock out during the past three months on my bus ride downtown:
- Them: Adventures With Extremists
- Body of Secrets : Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
- A Confederacy of Dunces
- Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams
- Slaughterhouse-Five
And I started The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century this morning. I must think of a way to maintain the momentum I’ve built up during these commutes when there is no commute to force me to do it…
UPDATE: I had forgotten to list the Paul Hemphill book originally.
I’m disturbed that they made ice AND coal at the same factory.
Yeah but you’ll have to take the train from Decatur to get to work, so that should give you some time to read. Probably not as much, but still some.
It takes me a pathetically long time to read a book these days. Guess that’s what I get for living in midtown. (I promise I’ll read that Paul Hemphill book… eventually.)
I heard you read THIS book too.
Actually, that’s supposed to be a pretty good book.
Hahah…gay hookers are so funny.
The World is Flat… is an awesome book. I started it a few days ago myself. To go along with that book, there are also a collection of podcasts that bring the book alive!
Especially the one that represents a speech Tom Friendman gave at Fitzgerald Theater.
That book brings alive many business ideas!
BTW, I found myself here by way of Yarrrrr… your Pirate theme… which I am in the process of implementing… with customizations… hope you do not mind!
Thomas Friedman? The horror! The horror!
The Ice House Lofts are a nice location - close to both the library and Oz pizza.
CM,
Heh. This is my favorite passage from that review:
I’d be the first to agree with you his writing itself is pretty bad, but I hold out hope for reading something I didn’t know before.
It seems as if someone has Friedman-envy! Twenty-eight weeks on the bestseller list, number one this week.
So the man makes some shallow metaphors? Blatantly plugs popular culture?
What of it? The nature of the subject and his passion more than makes up for a few explicit plugs and what Taibbi deems “most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit”….
Besides, and as far as titles go (which seems to be one of his gripes) “The World is Flat…” is not any worse than “Spanking the Donkey”…
The problem I have with Friedman has as much to do with his lack of knowledge as with his lack of eloquence. The Lexus and the Olive Tree includes this gem: “To be an American you just have to want to become an American.”
See also:
mcsweeneys.net/2004/4/28ward.html
kukratha.notlong.com
Mark Twain once wrote “Jane Austen’s books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.” I think that applies to Friedman too.
CM,
I’m about 100 pages into it right now, and have found that if I ignore all of Friedman’s analysis and malapropisms that there is still useful information in there. Primarily, the interviews with people running overseas companies and the accounts of working conditions in India, China, etc. have been useful, at least for me. So long as the formula of interview then crappy analysis applies, I won’t have found the time wasted since I can just ignore the latter.
Well, here is hoping that the list you left are pretty darn good because I just finished my last book and was looking for something new to read. Good luck with the move ~
I bought Friedman’s book because I spent two and a half weeks down at our corporate office hearing about how prescient it was. And hey, given my employer, you have to admire the amount of ink he gives to our supply chain division.
But once I bought it, brought it home and started reading … I realized that I prefer insights like Friedman’s in columnar doses. The same thing happen’d a few years ago when I bought Krugman’s The Great Unraveling. Both men are brilliant and particularly astute at seeing the Men Behind The Curtains (for both good and ill), but if you read too much of their work in one sitting, the innate repetition of their writing becomes apparent. Both men are great observers and reporters … but not necessarily great authors.
What did you think of the Ronson book? If you give it even a 3 out of 5, you really need to pick up his latest.
Thomas,
I’d say 3 out of 5 is fair for the Ronson book. 3.5 if we’re going on a half star scale. I’ll have to check it out.
My problem with the Friedman book so far is the central metaphor doesn’t work the way he wants it to. He says that since anyone on Earth can communicate more easily with one another that the world is “flattening” (i.e. - leveling). Umm, well, if the world is flat, then the distance between the two furthest points is further, not closer.
I reckon if one were to apply the business metaphor of horizontally-integrated companies versus vertically-integrated, that you can stretch that metaphor to almost work, but that’s a lot of effort.
you are a reading fool!! I STILL haven’t finished that damn Harry Potter book… I guess since all I do all day is read at work, it is hard to want to do it for pleasure when you get home… sigh
They’re opening up a Fellini’s across the street from Ice House lofts as well.