Book Log 2013 #4: How to Watch the Olympics by David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton

I picked this up thinking it would be like The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, but it's actually a reasonably straightforward guide to each of the sports on the program for the 2012 Summer Games. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - I wonder how many people picked up the Thinking Fan's Guide expecting actual soccer talk - but it's not particularly useful for sports you're familiar with (though it does provide some trivia and details that make a skim of those sports worthwhile).

The tone is light and it's pretty well written, but it's more of a browse than a straight through read. It can be surprisingly entertaining when you read about a sport you know well; the average American would find the chapter on basketball pretty funny. It'll still be reasonably useful for 2016 (though there won't be chapters on golf or rugby), so keep it mind when Rio rolls around and you want some clarification on dressage.

Book Log 2013 #3: The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden

I've not seen the movie, but if it's anywhere as good as the book I need to rectify that. I really enjoyed (to the extent that you can enjoy a book with Idi Ami as a main character) this study in how power can infect an otherwise intelligent person and make them think that the truly horrible is actually some version of normal (or at least pretend that it is).


Not that the main character, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan, is fully in control of himself. The very nature of a dictatorship means that no one is beyond suspicion, and whether Garrigan plans to run or reconsider the request of the British embassy to give Amin a lethal dose of something, the idea that he's free enough to do so is mistaken. The worst part is that Garrigan is stuck either way - he can tend to Amin and become complicit in his crimes, or try to get out one way or another and risk serious injury or death.

It's not always an easy book - nothing related to the Amin period is easy - but it's a great study of what absolute power does to both the person with it and the people who fall within its orbit.

Book Log 2013 #2: To Forgive Design by Henry Petroski

In this latest work, Petroski lays out various examples of how failures of various structures - bridges, buildings, parts of larger mechanisms, etc. - that are often blamed on design are actually often due to something else, a something else that never quite gets a much press as the initial blame, and thus doesn't give the full picture as to why the failure occurred.

It's an interesting topic, and right in Petroski's wheelhouse of engineering, design and failure, all topics he's tackled before. My problem with the book is that the topic is addressed with too much data. Chapters often brim with examples for a particular point, to the extent that I started to forget what point was being made. I found the book more successful when chapters dealt with a single example or topic (there's a great chapter about the replacement of the Waldo-Hancock Bridge in Maine, which I have some bias towards as both the old and new bridges are about 10 minutes from where my in-laws used to live, and I've crossed both a number of times).

So while I wouldn't label this book a failure, it is one of the harder slogs I've had with Petroski's book, and I didn't finish it. I hated to quit, but I just couldn't work through another dense, example-laden chapter whose point I'd lost due to all of the other information.

Book Log 2013 #1: Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

So I hadn't realized that I'd not started this year's book log until I was browsing entries looking for comment spam. I can't say I got any emails, Facebook messages or other communications pleading for its return, but here it is.

In this novel, a teenaged girl goes missing in the Saudi Arabian desert, and its up to the family's desert guide to find her.  Her body is eventually found by others, and when the autopsy turns up some surprising revelations, they ask him to investigate the death. The only way he can effectively do this, though, is to enlist the help of a female worker at the coroner's office, who also happens to be the fiancee of one of the girl's adoptive brothers.

Ferrais lived in Saudi Arabia for a time and was married into a Saudi-Palestinian family, and her first hand experience with the culture helps to support an already well-conceived mystery. And for all of the display of this traditional culture, there's all of the characters who are living out of synch with it, from the desert guide (a devout Muslim from Palestine rather than a Bedouin) to the lab tech (whose mother was Russian) to the family at the center of the mystery, with its adoptive sons and the daughters (and daughters in  law) who both fight for place in the family hierarchy and, in some cases, long for a freer life. While I don't expect the people in this book mirror the author's experience exactly, there's certainly a "write what you know" vibe.

This is the first book in a series of mysteries featuring Katya, the lab tech with the Russian mother. Probably a good idea to read them in order, and it's worth a go. I really enjoyed this book.

So this isn't the whole spam, just the closing line.

Let`s take our chance together to feel the smell of real money

It's ostensibly spam to get me to invest in some sort of dealer in pipes for oil and gas (drilling? pipelines? it's not clear.), but I love the idea that for my small investment I could feel the smell of money. That is some big-time plutocrat nonsense right there.

One of things I noticed while trying to catch up and finish this year's Lentorama was that I seemed to be getting a pretty significant number of page views each day - for example, 40 today - which didn't quite jibe with the number of views on my most recent posts (for example, the last 10 days of Lentorama have, collectively, no views, but that's sort of expected). So what gives?

The answer, as it so often is on the web, is comment spam. And in the interest of turning a nusiance into entertainment, I'm going to share some of the more entertaining entries before deleting them. From a 2002 post about the design for the new building at the World Trade Center site, we get these gems:

Tremendous things here. I am very satisfied to see your article. Thank you so much and I'm taking a look ahead to touch you. Will you please drop me a e-mail?

I never did drop an email, which I guess is why this person never touched me. Probably for the best, it probably would have wound up as an episode of SVU.

This piece of writing gives clear idea in support of the new people of blogging, that in fact how to do running a blog.

I'm guessing my clever idea was the use of appropriate syntax and grammar.

Hi there! This is my first visit to your blog! We are a collection of volunteers and starting a new initiative in a community in the same niche. Your blog provided us valuable information to work on. You have done a extraordinary job! 

I'm guessing the volunteers are behind the linked website, By Extreme F^ck!ng (my edit). I am not sure how off the cuff architectural criticism gave them information to work on, but I assume it involves spires and tunnels.

My family every time say that I am killing my time here at net, except  I know I am getting experience all the time by reading such nice articles or reviews.

Listen to your family.

Have you ever thought about including a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is valuable and all. However think of if you added some great photos or video clips to give your posts more, "pop"! Your content is excellent but with pics and videos, this website could definitely be one of the greatest in its field. Good blog! 

I imagine my posts would "pop" if I included video and pictures from the linked site, collegeorg!es.0rg (also my edits). My posts would probably also make many other sounds as well.

Happy to see that it's an org site, because there's not enough non-profit porn in the world. These kids should get a medal from the UN.

you are actually a just right webmaster. The web site loading pace is amazing. It sort of feels that you are doing any unique trick. In addition, The contents are masterwork. you've performed a excellent activity in this topic! 

I will also find true love on Flag Day.