Book Log 2011 #9: Innocent by Scott Turow

Fifteen years is a long wait for a sequel, and typically sequels that come out long after the first book pale in comparison (consider Joseph Heller's Closing Time or Ray Bradbury's Farewell Summer). Thankfully, this is a case where the wait results in a fitting companion to the original.

Just as with Presumed Innocent, Tommy Molto is trying Rusty Sabich for the murder of a woman, in this case his wife, Barbara. She apparently died of natural causes, but a day-long delay in reporting the death raises suspicions, which quickly develops into a case based on a variety of evidence (much of it circumstantial).

As much fun as it is to see these two square off again, the book is really driven by the younger characters, such as Rusty's son Nat, Nat's girlfriend Anna (who is more involved in the case than he knows), and a young assistant DA whose rock solid belief in Rusty's guilt leads down some ethically problematic paths. This not only helps inject new points of view into the book, but helps underscore that these books have taken place more or less in real time, adding weight to the histories of all the characters.

And, of course, Turow is the best writer of legal fiction (I can't really use the word "thriller") going. I often lament the wait between books, but would rather have that than the "books by the ton" approach so often taken.

You should read this book, unless you've not read Presumed Innocent. In which case you should read that first and then read this book.

Three things I was thinking about this whole President Obama birth certificate nonsense:

1. I feel fairly certain that the timing of the release was meant to give Donald Trump a boost. Because if you're the president, and you see a chance to have Donald Trump as your opponent in November, you'd do something to help along, wouldn't you? Even if he's just a free-spending loose cannon in the primaries, that's got to help.

2. Also smart timing in releasing the birth certificate while the rank and file are distracted by the royal wedding. The story was out of the news cycle by the time your late local news was giving you tips on appropriate pet attire for the nuptuals.

3. I was amused to hear Trump say he was pleased with himself over the release, as I think he's the sort of guy who is pleased with himself whenever he does something. I'm sure there are mornings when he gets out of the bathroom full of pride at the size and uniformity of color of his, uh, leavings.

Lentorama 2011: Better Late than Never?

Days 1-40: The 40 Most Common Words in the Bible

OK, so I skipped the Lentorama this year, but after having a couple of people comment on its absence (at least one of whom I think is sincere about missing it), I figured I'd come up with something, even as half-assed as this is.

I should note that this list is based on the King James version, which is the one version where I could find a word frequency list. I know, fans of the New Revised Standard version will be disappointed.

Anyway, your list:

AND - 28364
THE - 28269
OF - 21257
THAT - 12044
TO - 11683
IN - 11285
HE - 9022
FOR - 8684
UNTO - 8326
A - 7582
LORD - 7365
HIS - 7127
SHALL - 6796
I - 6664
THEY - 6638
NOT - 6579
BE - 6568
IS - 6442
THEM - 6073
WITH - 5973
HIM - 5900
ALL - 5606
IT - 5431
THOU - 4563
BUT - 4487
WHICH - 4432
WAS - 4369
GOD - 4293
SAID - 3981
FROM - 3679
HAVE - 3608
AS - 3603
THY - 3581
THEIR - 3478
MY - 3441
ME - 3410
WILL - 3307
WHEN - 3237
THEE - 3162
YE - 3058
ARE- 2952

And as a little extra, I've even put these together into a fake Bible verse:

And the of that to in he, for unto a lord his shall I they not be. Is them with him all? It thou but which was God said “from have as thy, their my me will when thee ye are.” - Second Book of Ezenekiel, 3:17

Feel free to come up with your own in the comments.

Book Log 2011 #8: A City So Grand by Stephen Puelo

Taking a wider look at Boston than Puelo's very entertaining Great Molasses Flood history Dark Tide, this book chronicles how Boston grew into national prominence over the latter half of the 19th century. From abolitionism to filling in Back Bay to creating the first subway in America, Puelo chronicles this fertile period in Boston history using both broad strokes and intriguing details that help develop those broad strokes (such as the story of Barney McGinniskin, Boston's first Irish cop).

If you're interested in the time period or the history of Boston, this should get on your list to read.

Book Log 2011 #7: The Fort by Bernard Cornwell

I think I like the idea for this book - a retelling of the doomed Penobscot Expedition of 1779 - more than the execution. It's not a bad book, but it never quite clicked for me. Enjoyable, nicely written, but not especially memorable. But I do give him props for writing a story located in the wife's former neck of the woods, as I got to transpose the old names and locations into current ones http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif(though admittedly Cornwell does give a healthy dose of this at the start of the book).

My other observation is that there was a pretty big gap between The Given Day and this book, caused in no small part to an attempt to read The Count of Monte Cristo on Stanza. It is way too long a book to read on a phone. I don't expect that reading a physical copy of the book would have helped, as it was taking an awful long time for Dantes to get around to his revenge. I eventually bailed, leaving my main impression of the book to come from the Mr. Magoo adaptation.

Book Log 2011 #6: The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

Outside of reading Mystic River I don't have much experience with Dennis Lehane's books, and passed on this one a number of times due to fears that it would be a predictable rehash of the sort of prejudices you'd expect in a book set in 1919 Boston. But when I finally relented and picked this up, I was happy to learn that while the prejudices are there - and really, they have to be in order for the book to be realistic - this is no rehash.

Instead, we get a sweeping tale where these prejudices run headlong into change, marked by the end of World War I, social and political changes caused by immigration, and the recurring tension of younger generations wanting to live out from under the strictures of their parents. That this results in violence - both personal and city-wide - is hardly surprising.

The story also benefits from using the occasional cameo, most notably the recurring appearance of Babe Ruth. It's interesting watching him cruise through the turbulent times, often unaware of the greater issues. In some ways it's refreshingly familiar - it fits with our notion of disinterested celebrities - but I also thought it gave a good general counterpoint to the intensely personal stories that make up the bulk of the book.

Worth the read, but it's approaching tome territory, so plan to spend some quality time working through it.

I'd not written about this year's BU men's ice hockey team yet as i never quite got my finger on them. They started the year 6-0-4, grabbed the top spot in the polls, and then proceeded to tank, with a loss and tie Brown and a blowout loss to RPI. They lost all four games they played against BC, and became the first BU team in 31 years to finish last at the Beanpot. They turned things around a bit towards the end of the season, going on a run against the weaker teams in Hockey East, before playing Northeastern in both the final weekend of the regular season and the first round of the playoffs.

I write about them in the past tense as tonight they lost the deciding game in their playoff series against NU, and they are almost certainly not going to make the NCAA tournament (though I'll have to fiddle around with USCHO's Pairwise Predictor a bit to prove it). And while I'm never happy when a season ends, I think this probably the right ending for this team (as bad as it makes me feel for the two seniors on the team, who deserved better).

In some ways this year's team reminded me of the 2007-08 squad, another talented group that underachieved and missed the NCAAs. Both squads had skilled players, solid goaltending, and an apparent disinterest in playing a full game. Jack Parker called both teams out for a lack of effort and passion. Both teams had a sure-fire pro in his freshman year (Colin Wilson and Charlie Coyle) who put up good numbers but didn't seem present. There are differences between the teams as well - the '08 team had distinct captain issues, while this year's did not, for example - but in the end I think the similarities outweigh the differences.

Now, that '08 team came back the following year and put together what is probably the best season in BU history, winning every trophy they could en route to the national title. I don't know if this year's team has the same potential, but with almost everyone coming back, and hopefully coming back with a bad taste in their mouths for how badly they squandered this season, I am keeping my fingers crossed. The puck drops again in seven months.

Book Log 2011 #5: The Trial by Franz Kafka

A classic tale of a man, Joseph K., arrested for a crime never revealed and judged by a government that is equal parts cruel, aloof and bureaucratic. Or at least that's what I understand happens, as I didn't get past Joseph's meeting with the wife of the courtroom attendant, which happens fairly early on. As much as I identified with his plight at the hands of forces he could not control, there were too many other times where I'd really question Joseph's actions, to the point where I'd figure he did something illegal and was too stupid to realize it.

This was another e-reader selection, and maybe that had something to do with my disdain, all of the page turning compounding my frustration with Joseph. Anyway, it didn't work for me.

Book Log 2011 #4: The Great Typo Hunt by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson

This was, in theory, a book right up my alley. Two guys road trip to correct typographical errors in public signage, and along the way help everyone improve their grammar and learn something about America. It reminded me of One Red Paperclip, albeit with less of a financial reward at the end.

The only problem was that I couldn't get past the writing, which never found an adjective it didn't want to cram into a sentence to make it more descriptive. In some cases the excess verbiage was probably not the right word to use. This quickly went from annoying to unbearable, and I bailed. I didn't even make it to the start of the road trip.

Book Log 2011 #3: The First Emperor by Steve Berry

Cotton Malone moves his landmark-destroying antics eastward in this latest novel in the series. The conflict this time comes with a secret society of eunuchs, who are trying to influence the selection of China's next leader by manipulating the two most likely candidates. Part of this involves proving that petroleum is created abiogenically, as ensuring China's energy resources would give a leg up to whatever person could claim it.

Unlike the other books in the series, this one starts off well into the adventure and then tells the story (mostly) in flashback, which is a nice change. I did think the story was better here than in the last book, and we've thankfully lost the two younger characters from that book who looked poised to become regulars. I still think the overall quality of the series has dipped from the beginning, but there's hope in this entry that things are rebounding.

(I also discovered on Berry's website that there's an original ebook that follows Cassiopeia Vitt as she tries to find the tomb of a Thracian king but stumbles across some sort of shadowy Russian mining interest. It's supposed to be a prequel to The First Emperor, and I'm just enough of a sucker to seek it out - though not enough of one to buy it.)

A post on Baseball-Reference.com's website about Hall of Famers and All Stars sharing birthdays, and gave some expected averages for how many you'd find for a given day (for me, no Hall of Famers and six All Stars appearing in 17 games, which is above average). But the question that framed the post - the formation of a team of players all born on Valentine's Day - got me to thinking who would be on the team of players born on my birthday?

The lineup:

Catcher - Ron Karkovice

First Base - Jocko Milligan

Second Base - Cupid Childs

Third Base - Mike Ivie

Shortstop - Cecil Travis

Outfield - Al Woods, Jose Cruz, Frank Howard

Starting Pitcher - Toad Ramsey

Relief Pitcher - Ken Raffensberger

Ivie at third is a bit of a cheat - he played fewer than 100 games at third over an 11 year career - but my next best option was a guy named Vern Morgan, who put together 17 games at third over two seasons with the Cubs in the 1950s (the highlight of a career that saw him play in the minors for 15 seasons, mostly at the A and AA level).

I wound up employing a similar cheat for relief pitcher. Raffensberger is actually the winningest pitcher on my list, six ahead of Ramsey. But he also has the third-most saves with 16 (the leader has a whopping 29), and his ERA and WHIP are much better than the two guys with more saves. So I'm going with him.

Book Log 2011 #2: The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson and Martin Dugard

This is billed as a "non-fiction thriller," though you'd not know if from the content, which is blissfully free of citations, source material, or pretty much anything suggestive of the research Patterson says was put into writing this thing.

The book is told in three story lines: one set in Egypt before, during and after Tut's reign, one that follows Howard Carter as he looks for an undisturbed burial site in the Valley of the Kings, and one that follows Patterson himself as he works on solving the murder of Tut.

I suppose Patterson's story line is truly non-fiction, although it pretty much winds up being him playing golf, thinking in his study, and calling Dugard to work on details. The Tut story is pretty much all fiction, as there is blessed little historical account of his reign, and the Carter story line, verifiable as it may be by contemporary accounts, adds nothing to solving the "mystery."

Patterson also gets overtaken by events a bit, as there's recent evidence from CT imaging that the hole in Tut's skull was created during mummifcation rather than during Tut's life (Patterson imagines an accidental head injury that is the original - but unused - method plotters used to kill Tut). Recent DNA studies also undermine the narrative details around Tut's wife, whose mummy was found in another tomb. Patterson has her body fed to crocodiles.

The vibe I get from reading this is that Patterson noticed that Tut's successors were court figures rather than family, and determined that they killed Tut to seize power. How this speculation leads to a "non-fiction thriller" is beyond me.

I can't say I'm a fan of Patterson's style, as it appears he never met three paragraphs he couldn't make into a chapter. I know there's a convention in thrillers to use short paragraphs to build tension and keep people reading, but the way its used here is almost a parody.

Give this one a miss.

With the looming NFL work stoppage, there's been a prevailing attitude that there will be no football next fall. As I was reminded on Facebook (h/t Yostal), as long as Roger Goodell doesn't control the NCAA there will be some football, just not at the (officially) professional level.

Which got me to thinking - what if the NFL replaced each of its teams with the "best" college team that shares its nickname? Here's how I think it'd go:

AFC EAST

University of Colorado Buffaloes for the Buffalo Bills - there are no teams in the NCAA with Bills as a nickname, but as they have a buffalo on their helmet I opted to go with Colorado. Which, really, is trading on sub-.500 team for another.

Jacksonville University for the Miami Dolphins - JU, a FCS team, was nationally-ranked at the end of the season but did not make the playoffs. Which is better than the NFL team, which was out of playoff contention well before the season ended.

University of the Cumberlands for the New England Patriots - OK, I'm kind of breaking the rules here, as the U of C Patriots play in the NAIA. But most of the schools that use Patriots as a nickname don't play football, which seems un-American. George Mason plays club football, otherwise they'd be a shoo-in.

SUNY-Cortland for the New York Jets - only one school uses Jets as a nickname - Newman University - but they don't play football. We could then use its original nickname, Titans, but Tennessee gets to claim that (for what it's worth). The original owners wanted to buy the Chicago Cardinals, but obviously Arizona gets first crack. And as I'm getting sick of this, I went with SUNY-Cortland, which is where the Jets have summer camp. It's actually kind of fitting, as they are also a team with New York in their name that plays in New Jersey (well, in New Jersey Athletic Conference, which is good enough).

AFC NORTH

Benedictine College for the Baltimore Ravens - again, not a common nickname, and the best I could do is this NAIA school from Kansas. There is a NCAA school I could use - Anderson University - but Benedictine seems to have a better team based on their history of conference titles and playoff appearances.

Idaho State University for the Cincinnati Bengals - I was sorely tempted to use the University of Maine at Fort Kent here, but they don't have football (their men's sports: basketball, soccer and nordic skiing). They still may be better than Idaho State, who went 1-10 last season and haven't had a winning season since 2003.

Brown University for the Cleveland Browns - The closest thing to a school using Browns as a nickname is Lehigh University having an alternate nickname of the Brown and White. It's still used to refer to historic teams, but it's not really in current use, so I'm going with the next best option. Which, based on on-field performance, is probably the next worst option when compare to Lehigh. Cleveland gets screwed again.

East Carolina University for the Pittsburgh Steelers - Shockingly, there are no colleges using the Steelers nickname, so as the NFL team originally played as the Pirates, we'll go back to that. And really, that's not such a bad deal compared to the rest of the division.

AFC SOUTH

Tarleton State University for the Houston Texans - one school uses the Texans nickname, and while the school is much closer to Dallas than Houston I'm sure they'll make do. They had a down year this year, but until the NFL's Texans the TSU version has made the playoffs. They even won a game, too.

University of Dayton for the Indianapolis Colts - OK, the Colts pose a problem. There are no schools using Colts as a nickname (which surprised me), and moving to their previous nickname we get... Texans. And it doesn't as we go deeper. The best I can do is Tigers, which a long-ago precursor to the Colts used for one season before merging with the Boston Yanks. So my solution is that as the team can trace itself back to the Dayton Triangles, let's go with the school that's there (as, shockingly, there are no schools using Triangles as a nickname).

Southern University for the Jacksonville Jaguars - I really wanted to go with IUPUI here, but they don't offer football. And if nothing else, they've got a kick ass band.

Illinois Wesleyan University for the Tennessee Titans - there are a handful of schools using Titans as a nickname, but many don't play football. This is the best of the bunch, and all things considered they may even be competitive in this division.

AFC WEST

Boise State for the Denver Broncos - This may be the most perfect fit of all, between the nickname, uniform colors, and familiarity with playing at altitude (Boise being the Half Mile High City). I should be happy about the serendipity, but as I loathe the Denver Broncos I'm not.

Haskell Indian Nations University for the Kansas City Chiefs - no colleges use Chiefs as a nickname (which should prepare you for some sort of wackiness when we get to the Washington Redskins), and I tried to use Ursuline College in Ohio as they're the Arrows (playing off of Arrowhead Stadium). They don't play football. So I figured if you have a team that trades on Native American culture, why not have them represented by actual Native Americans?

Colgate University for the Oakland Raiders - Fitting, as I think Al Davis and William Colgate were frat brothers.

University of New Haven for the San Diego Chargers - The best of a middling bunch, though New Haven was a D2 power briefly in the 1990s when coached by current Dolphins head man Tony Sparano.

NFC EAST

Oklahoma State for the Dallas Cowboys - Once again, a team I despise gets a good NCAA replacement. I'll just have to enjoy the discomfort folks in the Metroplex will experience by being represented by a team from Oklahoma.

Millikin University for the New York Giants - Only one school uses Giants as a nickname - Keystone College - and they don't play football. Thankfully, Milliken uses Big Blue for a nickname, and as that's a common unofficial nickname for the Giants I'm going with it. It also turns out that they play in the same conference as Illinois Wesleyan, which is something I suppose.

Boston College for the Philadelphia Eagles - You can imagine how much I didn't want to make this substitution, but my only other real option was Eastern Michigan, and they've just not played in enough third-tier bowls to justify selection.

Carthage College for the Washington Redskins - Holy crap, there's still a school using Red Men as a nickname? OK, it seems that they've gone from Redmen (using a feather in their athletic logo) to Red Men, a reference to the all-red uniforms of early Carthage teams (they also replaced that pesky feather with a torch). I have a hard time believing the NCAA bought this, but I guess it's just stupid enough to work.

NFC NORTH

Baylor University for the Chicago Bears - They did make a bowl game this year, which I suppose gives them a leg up on Central Arkansas and Coast Guard. Even if in most seasons, games between Baylor and those two schools would likely have been competitive.

University of North Alabama for the Detroit Lions - I badly wanted to go with Columbia here. Both teams are the Lions, both have blue as a main color, and both are very, very familiar with gridiron futility. But I did say I'd go with the "best" team, and I have no doubt that if North Alabama played Columbia, the final score would be 57-0, and not in the Ivy's favor.

Tulane University for the Green Bay Packers - Green Bay presents the opposite problem from the Colts. There are no colleges using Packers as a nickname, and there's no wiggle room to use an historic nickname. The Packers have always been the Packers, no mergers, no moves, nothing. So rather than play around with coaches or whatever, I went with the best team whose nickname started with 'green.' Of course, the perfect substitution for the Packers are the Edmonton Eskimos.

Augustana College for the Minnesota Vikings - I was all set to hand this over to Western Washington, but they've apparently dropped football. I assume Jon Kitna is to blame. I was surprised that this Augustana - located in South Dakota - wasn't the one I was thinking of. That Augustana, in Illinois, won four D3 titles in a row in the 1980s. Still, this Augustana is better than my next option, Portland State, who have won 11 games over the last four seasons. Neil Lomax hangs his head in shame.

NFC SOUTH

Air Force for the Atlanta Falcons - This may be the only time in NFL history where a team can run the triple option and get away with it.

Pittsburgh for the Carolina Panthers - I think if you made this offer to Panthers fans they'd take it, even if there were no lockout.

St. Lawrence University for the New Orleans Saints - Not surprisingly, most of the schools with the Saints nickname are Catholic and not particularly large. It's fair to say that those schools that offer football don't exactly command a lot of media attention. So I went with the school I knew the best, even if it is for hockey. Gary Bettman would approve.

Beloit College for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers - I had already typed East Tennessee State in here, but then checked and saw that they don't play football. As an aside, their website touts that the world's oldest person is an alum, as if they had something to do with it. Anyway, I was then going to go with Charleston Southern, except they appear to stink. So it's Beloit, who may be D3 but can at least break even.

NFC WEST

Louisville for the Arizona Cardinals - Like Detroit, there is a team that better fits Arizona's history, and that's Ball State. Both teams enjoyed one recent season of surprising success before returning to their traditional sucking.

Colorado State for the St. Louis Rams - CSU has had some lean years of late, but I'm fairly sure they're still better than Fordham or URI. Perhaps we could schedule a round-robin just to make sure.

Gustavus Adolphus for the San Francisco 49ers - Two schools use the 49ers nickname - Long Beach State and UNC-Charlotte - and neither play football. So I tried to work off the Gold Rush angle, and the one school that actually uses Gold Rush as a nickname - Xavier University in New Orleans - also doesn't play football. So I figured I'd go with the school that had the oddest gold-inspired nickname, and thus wound up with the Golden Gusties of GAU.

Wagner College for the Seattle Seahawks - Because UNC-Wilmington doesn't offer football and Salve Regina's team is somewhat less successful than Wagner's.

Man, I should have broken this up by conference. I was going to try to predict playoffs, but I'm just going to leave well enough alone.

As much of a football fan as I am, even I can't get myself interested to watch the Pro Bowl. After all of the usual talk about the lack of relevance for the game, I think it's time we try to focus on...

MAKING IT BETTER: The Pro Bowl

1. Import some CFL rules. If we're not going to have defense in the Pro Bowl, why not give the offense a chance to put up Arena-style scores? Unlimited motion would open up new possibilities for creative play calling, three downs to make a first would put more pressure on the offense to make yardage, and putting the defensive line a yard off the ball would help to open up the running game. Some would call it a travesty, but I would be happy if the Pro Bowl final score rivaled the NBA All Star Game final score.

2. Replace the game with skills competitions. About the only thing propping up all star games are skills competitions. Of the "Big 4" North American sports leagues, only the NFL doesn't have a skills competition. So let's add one, and instead of having it prop up an actual game, make the competition the actual focus of the weekend, allowing players to showcase what they do best.

Revive the Quarterback Challenge that used to be held in the off season. Have running backs and wideouts run an obstacle-type course to score a touchdown. Rig up a dummy for a hardest tackle contest. Have an open Punt, Pass and Kick competition. There are a number of options, and they'd all be more fun than watching guys go through the motions like they do in the actual game.

3. Combine it with other, non-football sports. I actually had this idea when reading Joe Posnanski's blog post about the game. He led off by talking about ABC's Wide World of Sports, and it got me to thinking that I'd watch the game if, say, Chris Johnson and Adrian Peterson had a best of five log rolling competition between the first and second periods. Or if you had a 10 lap ice motorcycle race at halftime involving all of the offensive linemen. Not sure where we'd get all that ice in Honolulu, but maybe rapid melting would only add to the fun.

4. Drop the conference split and embrace fantasy. It's rare to say that the NHL has trumped other leagues in something other than commissioner idiocy, but they nailed it when they allowed Nicklas Lidstrom and Eric Staal, the team captains, to have a fantasy draft to select teams.

This has obvious applications to the NFL, where fantasy interest is huge. Rather than use players, the two coaches could get together and draft their teams. They could even bring in fantasy experts as draft coaches. Make it even more fun by holding an auction draft so you have the subplots about players who feel snubbed because they were bought for $2. Then allow the coaches to trade players - even during the game.

5. Move the game to the third week in February. After two weeks of nothing but the drone of NBA, NHL and college hoops regular seasons, a football game, any football game, would be a welcome diversion. Moving it this late gives Super Bowl players a chance to play, allows injured players some more time to heal, and generally adds to whatever potential hype the league can muster for this thing.

Book Log 2011 #1: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

A long-ago quizbowl question on this book got me interested in reading it, and I finally followed through (several years later, I should note). It's the story of the first archbishop of the Catholic diocese of Santa Fe, a French missionary priest transferred from Ohio to work in the territory ceded to the US from Mexico. Bishop Latour taps his friend and fellow missionary, Vaillant, to serve as his vicar.

The book then covers their life's work in New Mexico, from rooting out the local priests who are either too incompetent or too crooked to continue serving to gaining the trust of the locals (Hispanic and Native American alike) to adapting to the burdens of a large, thinly-settled diocese. The story is told in episodic fashion, which is kind of useful when you're reading during a commute.

The book is best known for its descriptions of New Mexico, and it does paint some vivid word pictures of the untamed land. The characters suffer for this a bit, I think, and I'd have preferred to have had the relationship between Latour and Vaillant get more depth earlier on rather than being put at the end when Latour is reflecting on his life.

There were some aspects of the book that surprised me, such as the genuine interest both priests had in respecting local culture and beliefs within a Catholic framework. We've been conditioned to think of missionary priests as being fairly severe in getting the natives to toe the line spiritually, so it was refreshing (and perhaps a touch optimistic?) to see the priests approach this problem in a more tolerant way, I think knowing that a slower approach would reap more benefits over the long term.

Overall, I liked the book quite a bit and will likely read more Cather in the future (I should just download O Pioneers already).

This was the second book I read using the Stanza reader for the iPhone. You can pretty much expect that any time I read something older or in the public domain I'm doing it on the phone. It's still a little distracting given how often you have to turn the page, but it's a nice option when I can't get to the library or have limited space to hold something.

Barring a last-minute change, it appears that the coming Super Bowl will be the first one ever to not have cheerleaders, as neither Green Bay nor Pittsburgh have squads.

Really, what's the point of cheerleaders on the NFL level? The crowds are too big to have cheerleaders effectively lead cheers; odds are that most of the stadium can't even see them, much less respond to what they're doing. Really, they're there to look purty and give the TV cameras something else to shoot. Based on usefulness to the game as a whole, cheerleaders are the appendix of NFL football.

I know, the women on the squads are nice people and do stuff in the community and cheerleading is a traditional part of football and blah blah blah. But for me, they will not be missed.

OK, I say I'm going to post more here and then promptly disappear for a little over three weeks. So much for my New Year's cyber-resolution.

So what brings me back, if not to run a bunch of Book Logs by you? It's the news that Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club has tabbed Jay Leon as their man of the year. Jay Leno. Who wheedled his way back into hosting the Tonight Show, ousting Conan O'Brien. Who is a Harvard alumnus.

Maybe Conan pissed off the Hasty Pudding crowd when he was a student. Maybe he doesn't like dressing in drag. Maybe he called them out on having awards shows that are about as funny as Leno's work for NBC. Don't know.

I can't say I care greatly about this "honor" - to my eyes it doesn't do more than get the club some TV time and screw up Cambridge traffic - but the timing of the thing seems suspicious.

So here we are on the first day of 2011, and I have but one resolution to pass along, and it's fitting to announce it in this location. My resolution is to have more posts here that aren't book related. This thing has become about 85 percent book logs, 14 percent Lent stuff, and one percent everything else. I'd like to go back to the way things were when I started this thing almost ten years (!) ago, at least in the breadth of topics if not style.

Not sure why I've become less prone to write stuff here, but I'm going to blame Facebook. It's easy to dash off thoughts as status updates, and looking at past posts the timing seems about right. On the flip side, more people see my Facebook status updates than likely read this, so perhaps I should be more interested in linking this to Facebook. I did try this once, and didn't care for how it dumped a bunch of older posts in, resulting in scores of updates related to "new" entries. So I think I'll just leave this separate for now, which will at least keep it away from the mercies of Mark Zuckerberg.

Book Log 2010 #65: Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

I've read a couple of reviews of this book calling it a follow-up to Kitchen Confidential, but I don't buy that. Unlike that book, which was a straight-up tell all about restaurant work and Bourdain's fairly tortured life as a chef, this book is more a reflection on the world of food from a many who, by his own admission, is no longer a chef (though he loves it when people call him one).

The book is also more conflicted, as Bourdain has to reconcile being part of the food entertainment complex that he spends a fair amount of time lambasting. Having now seen the other side of the coin, he is now more understanding (and even apologetic) towards some of his previous targets, while remaining quite able to write scathingly about those who he believes deserve it (his chapter on food critic Alan Richman is a classic example of this).

So I think of this book as less of a follow-up and more of a checking-in, allowing Bordain to address some topics from the first book while making new observations based on things he's seen and thought since the first book came out. It's also an interesting example of how someone can sand down their rougher edges without damaging their core. Bourdain may be nicer, more understanding, and perhaps even somewhat humble, but he's still able to call things as he sees them and write about them powerfully.

Book Log 2010 #64: The High King of Montival by S. M. Stirling

This newest book in the Emberverse series sees Rudi Mackenzie, having gained the Sword of the Lady while on Nantucket, begin his return home as Artos, the high king of Montival (comprising most of the Oregon-based groups already introduced). Along the way he and his band make alliances with an eye towards a showdown with the Church Universal and Triumphant, whose powers have been blunted somewhat by the Sword.

While the book mostly sets up the coming war, I did like that it spent more time with characters and plot and less time messing about. One thing that did bother me, and seems to be a running issue over the last few books, is that the cover art. I assume the guy on the cover is supposed to be Rudi, but rather than getting the tall, muscular guy with curly reddish gold hair, the person on the cover is shorter and dark haired. I know this is kind of a fanboyish thing to get irritated with, but given how focused on detail Stirling is within the book, I'm surprised he's allowed the publisher to be so inaccurate on the cover.