I love books.  I just finished reading for the night (and polished off another Edward Abbey book – Hayduke Lives! – not as good as The Monkey Wrench Gang – but still really good.)  I went to put it in the “Read Books Bookshelf” (which happens to be the color red) and realized that it’s completely full (don’t think single bookshelf – think wall of books.)

I stared at the wall for a minute and then realized I had a similar predicament at home in Boulder.  We are completely out of bookshelf space throughout the house (and there’s plenty of it.)  Every few years, I decide that I’m going to give all my books to the library, but then I try and get rejected (the last time I tried, the Boulder Library told me that I could bring them in “a box at a time and they’d decide which ones they want – but they usually want less than 10% of the books” – screw that.)

I’ve decided that when I finish a book, I’ll drop it in the mail to a person that it makes me think of.  Rather than have them sit in boxes collecting dust, I’ll gift them to my friends on an ad hoc basis.  It’ll be my “virtual library” – I’ll have my books spread all over the place.

Both Amy and I love to read.  Normally, I read a book or two a week; when we are up in Alaska I usually get through four to eight per week.  If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I review a lot of books (or at least comment on them.)  Rather than torture you with lots of posts, I figured I’d do a weekly summary of what I covered.

Amy and I are both determined to lose some weight this summer (marathons are tougher when you are dragging an extra 20 pounds around.)  For inspiration, I started the week with 8 Weeks to Optimum Health and The Raw Food Detox Diet.  Neither of these had much impact on my weight (ok – I had some fried halibut at Boardwalk Fish and Chips) – 8 Weeks to Optimum Health was useful if you are overweight and have never really thought about healthy eating / healthy living and The Raw Food Detox Diet has way too many exclamation points in it for my taste (although it has some good recipes.)  I did drop a pound this week, but I attribute that to the mileage I covered, not the change in diet.

A blog reader introduced me to the writing of Dennis Lehane (I can’t remember who you were – can you leave me a comment here so I can publicly send you the equivalent of a dozen roses.)  His books are amazing, intense, complex, scary as shit, deep, extremely well written.  I got through the first four (of five) this week: A Drink Before The War, Darkness Take My Hand, Sacred, and Gone, Baby, Gone.  Like all good murder mystery PI crime books, the characters are complicated, get built up over time, and their past plays into their future.  Lehane feels like a cross between Robert Parker (set in Boston, a pair of PIs) and Harlan Coben (deep, sick, twisted bad guys), but more sinister, more sexy, and more violent.  Yum.  I finished each of them late at night and had trouble going downstairs alone.  If you like these kinds of books, these are must read mental floss. 

My pile of unread business books continues to grow faster than I read them (hmmm) so I tackled three of them this week.  The first one I read – So You Built It And The Didn’t Come, Now What? – was disappointing.  The author – Jackie Bassett – was an early employee of NetScreen and someone recommended this to me.  I thought it was poorly edited, lightweight, and weak on examples (lots of examples, but very few of them were impactful.)  There were a few good chapters on sales and sales management – the book is probably worth buying and skimming just for this if you are struggling to figure out how to effectively build and manage your sales organization.

Compassionate Capitalism is a book co-written by Marc Benioff – the CEO of Salesforce.com.  Salesforce.com and Benioff have been outspoken about the value of corporate philanthropy and the Salesforce.com Foundation is a great demonstration of Benioff’s philosophy in action.  The book is well organized, full of examples, and though provoking.  Every CEO should read this book, even if you don’t think you value corporate philanthropy.  As a special bonus, in addition to philosophizing and giving examples, it has lots of practical suggestions about how to approach corporate philanthropy.

Fire Someone Today was written by Bob Pritchett, the co-founder and CEO of Logos Research Systems.  It turns out that Bob is a Seattle YEOer and friends with some of my Seattle friends such as Andy Sack and Richard Rhodes.  I really enjoyed this book – Bob’s full of practical advice and experience.  It’s an easy and quick read – perfect for a CEO or entrepreneur that wants to brush of some of the mental cobwebs, or someone who is thinking about starting a business.

Every week deserves a good nerd book – this week was Growing Your Business With Google written by local Boulderite Dave Taylor.  Dave is an energetic writer and this book is in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide” series of books.  It’s definitely “a beginner’s guide to Google, blogging, and making money with your website”, but it’s well written, covers plenty of ground, and is easy to get through. 

Somewhere in the middle of the week I read 24-Karat Kids.  Again – someone recommended it (I can’t remember who – if it was you, please post a comment).  This was good, lighthearted mental floss.  Amy kept looking at me and asking “why are you reading that book?” but it was fun, entertaining, and a Nanny Diaries-like book that I could sort of relate to.

Overall, it was a great week for books in my world.  If I had to chose a few, I’d definitely do all the Lehane books, Compassionate Capitalism, and Fire Someone Today.  Time for a two hour run (and another two hours of Atlas Shrugged on tape) to see if I can knock a little more weight off.

I usually clobber a book every other day when I’m in Homer.  Last week was a slow week because of a family health issue that turned our world upside down for two days (all is ok now) and some friends that visited the past few days. 

I just finished The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey.  It was awesome.  This is one of the classics that helped start the environment activism movement and imprinted the phrase monkeywrenching in the minds of many people.  While it was written in 1975, it doesn’t seem dated at all – in fact, if anything – it was easy to transport myself back to the time when I was 10 and getting hauled around in the back of my parents’ Vista Cruiser station wagon across Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico.

While I don’t support the approach to environmental activism suggested by the book, it’s provocative and – if you can get your head back into 1975 – powerfully revealing about how things might (and – in many ways have) unwound over the last 30 years.  Abbey’s writing is brilliant (I guess it’s time to read a few more of his books), and stood out in stark contrast to An Inconvenient Truth.

On my trip last week, I tried a few times to read Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth but just couldn’t get into on the road.  So – I gobbled down Barry Eisler’s new John Rain book (The Last Assassin) and the new 24 book (24 Declassified: Operation Hell Gate).  Both were awesome and helped pass the time on a couple of the flights where my brain was baked but I didn’t feel like sleeping.

Barry Eisler is in my top five favorite mental floss writer category right now.  The Last Assassin is book number five – you can’t start here – you have to start at the beginning with Rain Fall.  The book started off a little slow as Eisler spent a lot of the first 30 pages catching up new readers on the history and the main characters that we were going to spend time with.  However, he hit his stride around page 50 and the rest of the book was impossible to put down.  This book has a little more set up and character development and a little less action, but I was still really happy with the balance – Rain is getting older so you’d expect him to slow down and be more pensive and introspectful.  A+.

I thought I was going to have to wait until January 2007 for my next round of 24 when I stumbled on 24 Declassified: Operation Hell Gate.  There’s a whole series of 24 books coming out (yes – I’ve ordered them all) – this is the first one I’ve read.  It follows the 24 format, but is set in the past (Jack is head of CTU Los Angeles, Nina is Jack’s chief of staff, Ryan is still a bureaucratic ninny, Milo is still an annoying nerd.)  The action takes place in CTU Los Angeles and New York City, which is a delicious change of pace, although Jack still manages to get across parts of New York in impossibly short periods of time.  The action is non-stop although it takes a little time to get used to the descriptions of the characters and what they are thinking vs. just the pure action of the TV show.  However, it was riveting – envision me standing in a one hour security line at Dulles, realizing I’m going to miss my plane, but not caring all that much while I read my book in line.  A+.

Eric Lunt, FeedBurner’s CTO – has a review up of the book Java Concurrency in Practice.  Eric is an absolute star developer – I’ve known him since the early days of FeedBurner and marvel what he and his team have been able to create.  If you are a Java developer and involved in creating highly scalable web apps, I recommend you take Eric’s advice and grab this book.

I’m not a lover of military stories, but I think Tracy Kidder is one of the best writers currently living on this planet.  I picked up My Detachment in one of the English language bookstores in Paris that Amy and I discovered (Village Voice Bookshop in the 6th was my favorite) and gobbled it down on the plane ride home.  It was magnificent – once again Kidder delivered a beautifully written book – this time about his personal experience as a Lieutenant in the Vietnam War.  When I went online this morning to look at some of the critical reviews, I found several of them negative – suggesting that Kidder didn’t really “get it” and that the book is “pointless.”  I thought those reviewers were missing the “point” – maybe I think Kidder is being too subtle, but he really does get at the fundamental “pointlessness” of war without either slamming you in the face with it or getting under your skin about it. 

I’m going to be optimistic given my belief that Kidder chooses each of his words carefully and presume that he intended the title to have the double meaning I assumed when I picked up the book.  While this isn’t The Soul Of A New Machine, it’s another great book from a masterful writer.

This week was my quarterly “week off from email / telephone / work.”  However, I didn’t really feel like I needed a complete break this time, so I kept up with email although I stayed off the phone.  Amy and I finished up a great month in Paris with lots of reading, walking around, a trip to the Louvre, great runs on the Seine, some good meals, and more reading.  But – no blogging – and it was really refreshing.  I hope you missed me.

I started the week with Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.  I love Hemingway.  I’ve read this book about 10 times, but this was the first time I’ve read it while walking the streets of Paris.  It was perfect.

Douglas Coupland’s JPod was next.  Coupland is predictably hysterical and after I laughed out loud for the 30th time, Amy tore the book out of my hands, read it, and then gave it back to me to finish.  JPod is an appropriate update to Microserfs.  His descriptions of China are over the top.

I struggled through King of the Jews, a version of the story of Arnold Rothstein, the original New York jewish mobster and the inspiration for Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby.  Tosches is a complex writer, there were several threads going simultaneously, and a lot of the history was lost on me. 

Hedgehogging by Barton Biggs was a great romp through the Biggs’ view of the hedge fund world.  He talked liberally from his experience of setting up his own hedge fund, along with many stories and anecdotes about fellow hedgehogs.  Biggs has always been a superb writer – even his market missives from Morgan Stanley – while not literary gems – were always stimulated and thought provoking.

Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst was fucking hard to read.  It was also impossible to put down.  Dan Reingold was one of the top two telecom analysts from 1997 – 2002 (the other was the infamous Jack Grubman) – this was Reingold’s side of the story.  Reading the ride up and the ride down – especially knowing how it ends – was just painful.

The Visiting Professor was absolutely brilliant.  I’m glad I ended with it.  I tried to read Littell’s The Company last summer and never got into it.  I’ll try again, with new appreciation for his writing style – I think I was just daunted by the size of the book.  It’s nice to finish up my Paris trip with my new friends L. Falk and Occasional Rain.

During the week, I’ve been listening to Atlas Shrugged on my iPod as I run.  This is the first time I’ve run while listening to an audio version of a book.  Atlas Shrugged is one of my mainstays (Amy carries it with her everywhere), but I haven’t read it from cover to cover in a decade.  Listening to it while I run has surpassed my expectations – I’ve enjoyed running to music, but getting lost in a book on a run is just awesome, especially one with Dagny, Hank, Francisco, John, and other old friends.

My palette is cleansed, my brain is rested, and I’m ready to return to Galt’s Gulch.

I love Christopher Moore’s books.  While A Dirty Job is nowhere as good as his all time best (Lamb : The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal – a book David Cowan turned me on to five years ago that resulted in me reading – in order – the other five books Moore had published up to that time), it’s still a riot.  Moore is – in three words – “one twisted fuck” – and his writing reflects his immense creativity and deeply warped sense of humor. 

Moore’s books take place in an alternate reality that is a minor sidestep from the planet we inhabit.  Most of the backdrop is earth and normal civilization, yet there are a few characters that are just a little bit off.  In A Dirty Job, you almost believe that Lily is a normal goth teenager, Charlie is a normal beta male, Minty Fresh is a normal seven foot tall black dude that wears green suits (and he prefers to be called “Mr. Fresh” thank you very much), and Audrey (who we meet late in the book) can make bizarre animated 14 inch tall “squirrel people” out of random animal parts and a few other things.  Oh – and be careful around Sophie’s dogs.

While this book ostensibly takes place in (and below) San Francisco, I was pondering the slight shift from reality as I finished this off at 2am in an apartment in the middle of Paris.  Tonight – as Amy and I went in search of Mexican food (a near impossibility in Paris – we thought we found a place – but it turned out to have vanished in the middle of the night to be replaced by an Indian restaurant, which we nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed) – I suggested that maybe the “death merchants” really did exist.  She just looked at me funny.

On my flight to Paris Sunday, I managed to finally finish Partnering With Microsoft and then proceeded to snarf down Who Moved My Blackberry?

I’ve been dragging around Partnering With Microsoft for the past few weeks as I crammed in a bunch of travel before my Paris trip.  I’ve “partnered with Microsoft” in various ways, shapes, and forms through numerous companies over the past 18 years.  While the history of this is interesting, it’s not nearly as important or relevant as the current reality.  Partnering With Microsoft does a superb job of describing how to partner with Microsoft – covering the broad spectrum of types of partnerships, giving lots of examples of what works and what doesn’t work – while immersing the reader in the acronyms and styles that are critical to being successful with working with Microsoft.  While this isn’t an exciting book, if you do anything with Microsoft, it is a must read. 

Who Moved My Blackberry? – on the other hand – was a fucking riot.  Unlike Company, which I also enjoyed,  Who Moved My Blackberry? requires zero suspension of disbelief.  While the main character – Martin Lukes – is British, he could be any typical corporate marketing executive trying to get along in today’s world.  Martin isn’t loveable, nor is he a particularly sympathetic character, but he is priceless.

It’s a cloudy day in Paris, but I had a great run down Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Arago.  Of course, I was trying to find my way to the Seine, but I went the wrong way on Boulevard Raspail.  Oh well, I’ll try again tomorrow.  And – in case you are curious – Mission Impossible 3 (which is most definitely not as good as MI-2) is playing in English here with French subtitles.