Arnold's Cyclopedia

I got yet another book from my local library! You should see what your library has to offer.

I checked this book out because A) I wanted some new exercises to do in the gym and the book lists pretty much every way you can lift a weight, and B) it costs like fifty bucks to buy a copy and weighs about nine pounds. My bookshelves are overloaded as it is and my checkbook is a bit underweight.

I did not read this whole book. Nor did I plan to. Nor would I bother. If you want a history of bodybuilding, it's in the book. If you want an entire workout plan for years, it's in the book. Every exercise ever conceived? In the book. Tips on competition? Yeah, it's in the book. I read the exercises. I have a few comments for those who might care.

This is the revised second edition of this book. It still offers a few exercises you should never, ever do (behind the neck chinups), but it also presents more alternatives. And, the discussion of squats and deadlifts goes much further into safety and why it's so important to keep the back straight. That's a good change.

The exercise plans are fairly absurd. Work out six times a week, hitting each body part three times? Fine, if you're on steroids. Anyone else will overtrain in a heartbeat. Then it gets better, with a plan for two workouts a day six days a week. Again, poor advice for non-roided types.
Of course, I'm not planning on using any of the workout plans in the book. I've done enough work on my own to know what works for me and I'm happy with that (although I'm less happy with the fact that I went to the gym all of once in November, and maybe four times in December). And after all, what should I have expected from a professional bodybuilder/governor (though probably not governor anymore by this time next year)?

All in all, this is a book with many ideas, only about half of which are probably crap. This is pretty good as books of ideas go. Most philosophers probably get to about 50%, if they're lucky. I'm sure my writings don't crack the 50% crap level. Marx never got anywhere near it. And, if you need to glue two things together, you can set this book on top of them.

Bartleby the Scrivener

So, I read Bartleby the Scrivener, part of this book here called The Shorter Novels of Herman Melville. I checked this book out of my local library.

If I had more time I'd probably read the other shorter novels of Herman Melville, but as it is I've been busy and I only checked this out to read Bartleby. I did this on the advice of a friend, but I no longer know how the subject came up. To be honest, I'm not sure I got Bartleby. Was there something to get? Or was I just looking for something more than was there. I guess this was just absurdism, and as such, it was an interesting read. Though I would have to argue with a few points. The coda wherein it is supposed that Bartleby worked in the dead letter office really seemed to destroy the mood. I don't know. I liked the idea of Bartleby just being impossible to figure.

That said, I like the way he controlled his situation. I'd like to see something similar happen in reality, to see how it would play out. How long could you get away with simply prefering not to do things? I'd prefer not to go to work, but I don't think I'd quite manage that as successfully as Bartleby controlled his boss.

It was interesting. And short, which is nice, since the books remaining on my reading list are both very long and have taken me a long time to read.

Freakonomics

So... I read Freakonomics, which apparently is one of the biggest nonfiction books of the year.

I didn't buy it, though, I borrowed it from a friend. It turns to be very interesting and thought provoking, but I'm not sure it's quite as amazing as a lot of folks are saying. The main problem with this book is that not everything in the world can be explained with the cold logic of economics. I like the book's premise--that we can use the tools of economics to answer all sorts of questions. I like the idea of coming up with my own questions and trying to find solutions in the same manner as the book's authors. But I am not among those who believe that all of live can ultimately reduced to algorithms. Messrs Levitt and Dubner seem to think that is possible.

I may write a longer review when I'm feeling better, but I might not. This book gets... oh, I don't know. It's probably worth a read, I mean, it is interesting. Just don't forget your salt.

Test Pattern

Okay, so I was going to go off on my next adventure (St. Pete Clay, specifically), but then Clemson put three touchdowns up on FSU and now I can't leave the television. I'll go to the studio tomorrow.
So... I guess I should write a review of Test Pattern, by Marjorie Klein, which I read while on vacation.
I picked up this book at the used book store in downtown while wandering around down there one afternoon. I also picked up several other used books, and the total bill came to something like four dollars. So as you can see, this book didn't exactly cost a bunch of money. For what I paid, it was a good book.

It was Marjorie Klein's first book; she writes for the Miami Herald and the book has a promotional blurb from Dave Barry on the cover. That's pretty high praise; I'll read anything by Barry and for the most part I'll read anything he recommends (say what you will, but I think Dave Barry's a better judge of literature than Oprah). That, and the cover of the book caught my eye. Bright yellow, with a picture of a TV dinner. The old kind of TV dinner, the kind that predated microwaves and that had those neutron peas that never seemed to warm up all the way (and seemed to exist in every compartment of the dinner whether there were peas in the dinner in the first place or not).

They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but that is in reality how we judge most books, and nearly everything else as well. And I'm not disappointed in this book. It wasn't bad. It wasn't remarkably good, but it had its own charms.

The central conceit of the book is that there's more in the tv test pattern than meets the eye--at least for one little girl. The book is set in the early 1950s or very late 1940s, in the early days of television. The family at the center of the book have just acquired their very first television, and the book's theme is the effect tv has on the family. As you might expect, the effect is not exactly a good one.

Marjorie Klein has done some very amusing things here. For one, each chapter alternates between the daughter narrator, and third-person narrator following the mother. This is pretty unique; I've tried to write stories where multiple characters each get to narrate, and the reason so few people can make this work (Faulkner aside) is that it's hard to get the narrators to be convincingly individual. Here, instead of having mother narrate herself, mother's chapters are written by a third narrator, but with a very limited point of view. I've never read a book that used this tool, and I quite enjoyed it.

The father, who is a key character in the story every bit as important as mother and daughter, doesn't get to narrate. Hard to say why exactly, but there are plenty of possible reasons. We never really get into his head, but it's clear enough exactly what sort of problems he's having, with his wife, with his job, with life in general. That he doesn't suffer from not having his own chapters is clear enough indication that Marjorie Klein knows what she's doing.

As I said, it was an enjoyable read, but not one of my favorites. The test pattern bit seems...silly, and frankly insignificant, until the moment comes in the story when it actually plays a role. And then, it feels a little... I don't know. You can't call it deus ex machina, since she's set it up right from the start of the story. I guess it's just that, I never fully bought into the test pattern magic anyway. I have problems with magic in realist stories, and this is a very realist story. In fact, I almost wonder whether the magic is necessary to story at all--and until that one fateful moment late in the book where it does matter, it could almost be eliminated. So it feels as though this bit of magic is only in the book to save everybody there in that one crucial climactic moment.

That, and, there's a glaring error in the book that should have been picked up by a decent editor. At one point when snippets of The Simpsons appear in the test pattern, Lisa's name is given as "Susie." Why Susie? It's a throwaway moment and thus no commentary is intended by the name change; it's simply an error, a bizarre error to be sure, and the sort of thing that editors are paid to catch. Then again, I do watch an inordinate amount of Simpsons, since it's on twice every night as I'm cooking and eating dinner.

The main commentary in the story, about television's effect on this working-class family, is very well stated, and the book is worth reading because of that. Indeed, a lot of people who have less trouble with magic in realist stories would probably enjoy this book a great deal. As for me, it was... okay.

Savannah

Lucky for me, the last few books I've received as gifts (of which Savannah is one) have all been very good. Savannah is not the sort of book I probably would have picked up on my own, so I'm doubly glad to have got it (was it for my birthday? Or Christmas?). Thanks, Mom and Dad!

I've never read John Jakes, though I've thought about picking up Charleston once or twice. I probably will. This is a very simple little story, a fast read, but rather exciting nonetheless. The cast of characters is wide but ably drawn, and with a handful of exceptions are brought together well at the end. I read most of this book this afternoon; it's not a particularly weighty tome, but it isn't meant to be. It's the sort of thing you could read in a few days at Christmastime, and I think that's what was intended. (More after the Jump.)

The story centers around a young girl named Hattie Lester, and the family cobbled together around her. She and her mother share duties at a dried up old plantation on the outskirts of Savannah. They flee into the city to stay with a friend as Sherman's troops approach the city, and the story plays out around and through those desperate circumstances.

The book takes in over a dozen separate plot lines, which is a lot to manage. This can be a bit confusing in the early going, keeping everyone straight. Once the action moves into Savannah along with the Union army, the book picks up substantially. I'll wager you probably won't want to put it down once Gen. Sherman himself makes his appearance.

Of course, by the time you've got a third of the book left, you have a pretty good idea how it's all going to play out in the end. The question that keeps you reading is, how exactly is Jakes going to get us there? It's well worth the journey.

My main criticism would be that one of the plotlines is deemed so frightfully unimportant as to not warrant resolution at the end of the book. This little plotline seems to stem from a need to allow young Hattie to visibly irritate her relatives early on in the story; Jakes returns to it only two or three times, taking the time to flesh out a backstory on a sympathetic character, but come the end of the book the story is left open. Hopeful, but open. I question the need for it, but this is minor.

Gen. Sherman is almost sympathetic here, which is saying something because of all individuals I've studied from that era, Sherman comes the closest to having a heart of pure evil. I'm not saying I need to reevaluate my impression of him, only that Jakes has done a good job here.

This is a very charming little story, and as the Christmas season is approaching and it's coming out in paperback, it's probably worth picking up.

The Mother Tongue and Seven Samurai

I recently finished Bill Bryson's wonderful book The Mother Tongue. And, I recently watched Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai.

Both are highly recommended. Of the two, the book is the more accessible; if you have an aversion to subtitles you won't enjoy the movie, but then, if you have an aversion to subtitles just grow up. I'm no big samurai movie fan, but this is one of the great movies of all time (if we believe the AFI 100 list), and is well worth watching for characterizations. Unlike modern action movies that claim descent from Seven Samurai, this movie actually has three-dimensional characters and stands as a great film apart from its action sequences. It is three hours long, but if you watched Dances With Wolves or any of the Lord of the Rings movies you should be over that.

The Mother Tongue is an extremely amusing look at where English comes from and why it is the way is. It's not exactly a linguistics textbook, but for the vast majority of us who have no particular desire to take a linguistics course, that may be a good thing. The book covers the development of English, then takes a look in separate chapters at slang, names, swearing, and numerous other topics of general interest to anyone who speaks or reads English (which is all of you). It's an extremely entertaining read, so much so as to warrant not reading it anyplace that you'd earn disapproval for laughing out loud.

Again, both are highly recommended. I would have written longer reviews because I much enjoyed both book and movie, and both gave me something to think about long after I'd finished them (how often can you say of an action flick that you were still thinking about issues it raised hours later as you went to bed?), but other matters (detailed in a post later this evening) have occupied my mind rather a bit more this afternoon.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Totally Spoiler-Free Review:


1. Well, I at least knew who wasn't the Half-Blood Prince, but I didn't guess who was.
2. This book was way, way better than Order of the Phoenix.
3. I had guessed correctly what might happen at the end of this book. I feel very smug about all this, especially given some of the theories I read.
4. Ms. Rowling has given herself a very, very big list of things to accomplish in Book 7. No wonder she said she would probably just "keep writing and writing and writing." I guess we shouldn't expect to see Book 7 before, oh, 2007. Enough time to reread all of the previous 6 beforehand.
5. It's not that this book is so much better than Neuromancer, but, you know, it took me two days to read it. As opposed to two months. I could have read it in one day if I hadn't started reading at 8'00 in the evening.
6. I now believe nearly the entire story arc of book 7 can be found in the six existing books.
7. Let's say the comments are nota spoiler-free zone, so we can feel free to talk about the book there.

Neuromancer

I have finally finished reading William Gibson's Neuromancer. It only took me, what, about two months?

Like Frankenstein and The Martian Chronicles, this was a book I didn't so much want to read as it was one that I felt I should read--because it is the first "real" cyberpunk novel. Like those other books, I was a little less than enthralled.
A not entirely negative review follows the jump.


I enjoy the "cyberpunk" genre as rule. I like detective stories and crime novels, I like dystopian fiction, and while I wouldn't call myself a sci-fi "fan," I do appreciate the genre. Cyberpunk tends to blend these things together, and I like blenders.

If I may be so bold as make some sweeping statements about cyberpunk: beyond what the Wikipedia article linked above says, there are a few other general similarities. Cyberpunk usually has a male protagonist, and a female protagonist who links up with the male, though not always sexually. This male is, at least in the outside world, usually a loser (an "anti-hero" in the literary jargon). The female is usually attractive and given over to leather and boy toys like motorcycles and skateboards; in particular she is tough and can fend for herself--but at some point in the story her feminine vulnerability will be exposed. At the end of the story, the man and the woman do not get together.
Cyberpunk endings are vague, and often dissatisfying. So is life a lot of times.
Cyberpunk's stock in trade is a fantastic but recognizeable near-future, or even present day. Like Tom Clancy, cyberpunk writers throw around a lot of jargon that they don't bother to explain. Context often takes care of this, and where it doesn't the mind is free to wander. A good cyberpunk novel introduces a lot of new concepts, and coins new terms, and some are often quite prescient.

I would like to try my hand at maybe a little cyberpunk short story sometime. The fact that Gibson knew next to nothing about computers when he wrote Neuromancer gives me hope that I could do this. But, the fact that Gibson knew next to nothing about computers also shows through in this novel, in a way that Neal Stephenson's avowed dislike of the internet did not show through in Snow Crash (which is a superior novel in most respects). The novel, written in 1984, also shows its age.

Gibson's characters are at least temporarily interesting, but if you like backstory you won't find it here, unless the backstory affects events in the current story, as with Armitage. In other words, if you like to see where characters come from and why they might react as they do, if you like a good character study, this is not your book (some readers will disagree with me; I'll get deeper into this later on). You'll learn little about the twin protagonists, less about the periphery characters. I hate to say it, but it makes it harder to care about the protagonists. The mysterious nature of their quest, and its vague morality, make it hard to care about the outcome. And when you don't care about the characters or what they're up to... well, then it takes you two months to read the book.

Still, Gibson broke some new ground here. His imagining of the Freeside space station and the necessary oddities of a rotating, cylindrical space, is close to genius. His vision of Chiba City's Ninsei enclave--and his rationale for its existence--has echoed throughout the entire cyberpunk genre. Certain scenes in the movie Hackers look like a visualization of Ninsei. I love this description of the place's existence:

But he also saw a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn't there for its inhabitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself.

I'm sure at the time Gibson thought this was a true and worthy insight. Nowadays it seems the companies at the forefront of this "burgeoning technology" are trying to shut down any potential playgrounds and keep the technology for themselves.

Gibson also managed to make a couple of contributions to the lingo--"ice" as a byword for network security, "construct" as a word for a digital entity based on a real person (think Halo), that sort of thing--but the real feat of this novel is that it was written in 1984. The internet as we know it did not exist, but Gibson came up with a plausible realization of it. His visual depiction of what the Net looked like to a hacker who had "jacked in" compares again to 1995's Hackers; note that the computer in that movie, which is depicted much like Gibson's "Net," is called "The Gibson" in his honor.

The book was ground-breaking. It more or less created, or at the least defined, a new genre of fiction. It is imaginative, fast-paced, and includes enough sex, violence, and drug use to keep even the most worldly and jaded readers interested.

Still, Neuromancer left me feeling somewhat empty. It wasn't the ending (hey, I just watched Cold Mountain; this ending was great in comparison). No, I keep coming back to the characters, to Case and Molly. Both are interesting as characters, but not interesting enough to really be worth caring about.

This may be part of the problem with cyberpunk. Anti-heroes and tough girls can be interesting because they break the mould, but if their characterizations do not go far beyond that, they don't hold your interest. Case and Molly are interesting character sketches. There's not a lot to Case--we know he's 24, that he used to be a great hacker cowboy, and that he got burned by a mega-corporation/crime syndicate (megacorps being an important aspect of this novel and this genre) for being naughty with their data. We know little else about him, and, since despite attempts to correct them he maintains his drug addictions and his impropriety, it's hard to see why we should care what really becomes of him. Case is a protagonist (unlike Cold Mountain's Inman) who's death would not sadden us. Molly has more backstory (which will be familiar to readers of Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic (though not to viewers of that film)), but her motivation--she's only doing it for the money--makes her hard to know, hard to get involved with, and hard to care about. The most interesting character in the entire story, apart the eponymous Neuromancer, is Armitage, a broken and twisted man who's backstory we get just a tantalizing hint of. But Armitage plays another role; he's more of a tool than a character, both in the sense of his role in the story and his characterization.

So how big a fault is this? Gibson was, as I said, defining a new genre, and sometimes in doing that, especially if one isn't doing it consciously (it's hard to believe Gibson wasn't conscious of it, even if it wasn't his primary intent), the genre itself, the plot and its direction, outweigh the characters. The question, after all is, "What is cyberpunk?" not "Who is cyberpunk?" Case is a shell, like Molly and, quite literally, like Armitage. These shells have been expanded on and fleshed out by later writers, and by Gibson in some of his later works. In the long run, my inability to care about Case is less important than my ability to understand what he is.

Still, this makes characters into mere tools. I don't like to think of them that way. In my own writing I've discovered that plot happens because of the characters; plot doesn't happen to the characters. Not all writers work that way; not all readers expect it. But I do. And for that, and despite all the great and interesting things about it, Neuromancer was a disappointing read.

A History of Post-Colonial Lusophone Africa

Yesterday I finished reading A History of Post-Colonial Lusophone Africa, a book that was as informative as it was entertaining to watch people's expressions when they saw its title.

Yes, I chose to read this because I wanted to, not because I had some pressing reason to do so. Africa is a mess. The five former Portuguese (which is what Lusophone means, don't ask me why) colonies in Africa are particularly messy. Here is a book that purports to frame their particular messiness in terms of the colonial legacy and the post-colonial mistakes of their leaders. Lusophone African history is a microcosm of overall African history, and there just aren't many (any?) good African histories. Plus, having been rather smitten with Portugal on my sole trip to that country, I've become keenly interested in Portugal and its legacy.

The rest of the review is after the jump.


The book is divided into two sections and written by a team of six. The first section is written by Patrick Chabal, who has written a number of books on Angola. Angola thus figures fairly prominently in this section, which is a general overview of the history of the Portuguese colonies as a group--what they faced in common, what separated them, and why some succeeded while others failed. Of course, in a very real sense all of them have failed, so this degenerated into a discussion of why they each failed in different ways and at different speeds. Chabal is not a terribly exciting writer, but one needn't know very much about these countries or their history to understand what he's written.

The second section includes pieces on each of the five countries individually, each written by specialists on those countries (and edited by Mr. Chabal). The chapters on Angola and Mozambique--by far the most important and interesting of the five colonies--include much information already discussed in the earlier section, but both contain plenty of new information and are for the most part fairly easy to read, particularly the section on Mozambique.

By far the worst part of the book is the chapter on Guinea-Bissau. This is a shame since I've always felt that if I could become a third-world dictator, Guinea-Bissau is the country I should like to rule. The author, Joshua Forrest, is clearly of this group the one most tainted by academe; his writing is particularly illucid and much that might have been informative and interesting is buried under a layer of jargon. Additionally, the chapter's layout fails to use any even remotely chronological order, which makes it difficult to follow.

The two final chapters are somewhat shorter, being about particularly small and unimportant places (Cape Verde and Sao Tome e Principe). Both chapters are chock full of information you never knew existed about countries you may not have known existed. They are also among the best written parts of the book; I suppose specializing in a place like Sao Tome e Principe presents you with few enough opportunities to publish that you make sure what you do publish is very good.

Sadly, AHOPCLA was published in early 2002, and thus misses out on several frightfully important developments, notably the 2004 coup d'etat in Guinea-Bissau that brought former prime minister Kumba Yalla into the presidency, and the death lat er in 2002 of Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi; Savimbi's death finally put an end to near 30 straight years of civil war.

Overall, however, there is no better book on the subject. There is essentially no other book on the subject, either. Should you ever have a yen to know more about obscure and destitute places, this is all the information you'd ever want to have.

Turners and Burners

I've finally finished reading a book! It's been, what, about three, four weeks? I've been trying to whittle down a backlog of Economist magazines and it's cut into my regular reading time. Oh well.

So the book I finished was Turners & Burners, by Charles Zug. I had to finish it because it was due back to the library today. Yes! I actually have a library card, and I use it! Amazing, no?

But anyway, this book is about the folk pottery tradition in North Carolina. Sort of an esoteric subject. I'd write an honest review of it, but I think the odds of anyone reading this blog, at any time in the future, really needing this book, are pretty slim. It is, at least, a wealth of knowledge, and has a lot of good pictures in it. Zug has written the definitive book on the subject, such that he is referenced in almost every significant American pottery book that has been written since. And, I learned a lot of good techniques in this book--capping pots, ways to do lids and handles, that sort of thing.

This is the sort of book I'll have to check out again in the future. It has everything you'd need to be a North Carolina folk potter--glaze recipes, notes on where the clay came from, how to build a treadle wheel and a kiln, how to fire. Turners and Burners may not be a book for everyone, but if it's a great resource if you want to know anything about the life of the folk potter.

Expanding the reading list

I didn't want to have to drop some of the books off the end of my "Recent Reads" list, so I've expanded it to ten. I put Frankenstein and the Martian Chronicles down at the bottom even though I read them after numbers 7 and 8. But since I've already mentioned them on the blog, I figure it will be no great loss if they drop off the list first.

But maybe you're curious about some of the other things on the list.

Number 8 there is Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. I read this on my last deployment, and I loved it. It is a terrific story, entertaining and sometimes funny, and it always makes you think. Martel is a lyrical writer, almost as good as Michael Chabon, and it's a pleasure to read his words. The story, of course, is somewhat fanciful--at least, it might be. The ambiguity of its reality is part of the fun. Of the fiction books on this list, I would give this my top recommendation for all my readers.

Number 7 is Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. It's the first Heinlein book I've read; this is the "uncut original version" and I'm not sure how the abridged version would read. This is certainly an interesting book. Heinlein's views on sexuality and religion are...different. But certainly of some interest. This is an absolute classic of the genre so any sci-fi fans who haven't read it would be encouraged to do so... but bear in mind that the subject matter is a bit out of the ordinary.

Number 6 is A Court Divided, by Mark Tushnet. Tushnet is a law professor and Supreme Court scholar. His book is about the Rehnquist Court, and the various factions thereon and how they've affected the conservative legal agenda--namely, it's been variously thwarted in some circumstances (property rights) and moved forward in others (religion in the public sector). This is an interesting study, especially combined with the fourth book on the list, but would be of interest mostly to people already interested in legal issues.

Number 5 is Age and Guile beat Youth, Innocence, and Bad Haircut, by P.J. O'Rourke. O'Rourke is one of my very favorite writers; he practices what you could call gonzo journalism," though he's not quite so ridiculous about it as Hunter Thompson was (though Thompson is fun to read anyway). This is a book of some of his older pieces, the type of thing that you publish after you've published a lot of other books, which O'Rourke has. It's not his best, but it is entertaining.

Number 4 is The Supreme Court, by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. This is one of the classic popular studies of the Court's history and function, and is far and away the most strongly recommended book on this list for every reader.

Number 3 is O'Rourke's All the Trouble in the World. This is one of his best, maybe his very best, but it's hard to say. Chapters include Plague, Poverty, the Environment, Famine, Overpopulation, and the various other of the world's ills, and O'Rourke travels to countries around the world to report on what causes those ills, what they look like first-hand, and what is and can be done about them. I love this book; this was probably my fourth reading of it. It would be really cool to follow in O'Rourke's footsteps but, oh well, guess that ship has sailed.

Number 2 is poo. But book number 2 on this list is the Count of Monte Cristo, which I've already discussed. Read it, it's good.

Number 1 I just finished last night, O'Rourke's Eat the Rich. This was his next book after Trouble and, if you read them in order, you can see how he gets from one to the next. After visiting Haiti (Plague) in the previous book and discovering that the plague there was secondary to the crippling poverty and governmental mismanagement, he wrote that the real solution to Haiti's plague was to make the Haitians rich. In Eat the Rich, O'Rourke travels to such places as Wall Street, Sweden, Cuba, and 1997 Albania (after the pyramid schemes collapsed) to look at what makes wealth, what wrecks it, and how to go about making everybody in the world rich.

P.J. O'Rourke was once a self-described conservative, but in the last 5 years he's been working as a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and preaching some degree of the libertarian gospel. What would make him unusual as a conservative Republican is the desire to see everybody in the world get rich. A lot of conservatives (casting aspersions here, but conservatives do it to liberals all the time) seem not to be terribly concerned about getting the rest of the world--or even the poorer parts of our country--rich. Of course, a lot of traditional lefties feel the same way. Wanting everybody to get rich is definitely a libertarian ethic, and O'Rourke sells that gospel very well.

So there you have it, my recent reading list. I'll discuss the other books as I finish them.