A year and three days later…

I’m alive! The only thing that motivates me to write on this blog is to review books I have read this last year.  Sometimes blogging strikes me as being sooo 2009, but I have got a bit of time on my hands so I might as well crack the whip.  Maybe this will spark me to post more frequently.

I have noticed that I have about four or five general interests that all of my reading seems to consist of:

• Sci-fi, especially over the last few years from the glorious Ms. LeGuin.
• Russian Literature, especially from the 19th century.
• Czech Literature
• Dystopias/Utopias
• Good LDS literature (stuff you actually have to look for, not usually found at your neighborhood Deseret Book)
• and recently books dealing urban planning and transportation

I also occasionally dabble in classics or books that have won awards or new and notable books.  That about covers it, now that it now includes almost every book ever written!  But for the record, I do not prefer to read Romance, Westerns, most Young Adult, Mysteries, Thrillers, Belgian Literature, Self-helps, and Political stuff.

Books I actually finished:

The Dispossessed Ursula K. LeGuin

Worlds of Exile and Illusion Ursula K. LeGuin

UKL is I think I have to now admit is my ALL-TIME favorite  science fiction author.  Every time I pick up one of her books I am just blown away by her style of writing, her creative ideas, and a little of je ne sais quoi.  Maybe it is because she is a female writing in a male-dominated field.  Maybe it’s because she lives in Portland.  When I am reading her books, it instills in me my egoizing desire to write an even better sci-fi book, which would be impossible.  She really does take a fresh spin to sci-fi, focusing on social and cultural elements rather than scientific and adventure. 

A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini

This is another great book by the author of The Kite Runner.  It takes the reader deep into the awful, horrible world of women living in Afghanistan under shahs, mullahs, and the Taliban.  It was a good book to read at work because it reminded me that there are places worse than work (I chose to read 1984 at work next for this very reason).

Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt

This is a work of nonfiction based on a blog that I frequently read.  It tells the story of a rogue economist and some of his ideas that go against conventional wisdom, such as:  the biggest reason crime dropped so significantly in the 1990s was because so many would-be criminals were aborted fetuses, and how your name can affect how people look at you in your life and can affect if you get a job or not.  Good thing I have a strong Hebrew name like Joel.  I did enjoy reading this book.  It’s really hard to prove that anything really happens because of something else, and it’s also easy to prove anything when you meddle enough with the stats. 

Bright Angels and Familiars Eugene England

Canyons of Grace Levi Peterson

The first book is the seminal collection of quality LDS literary short fiction.  Almost every story in here is very well-written.  This book provided the jumping off point for me looking into some new authors, such as Levi Peterson.  Let me just say it is refreshing to read stories about my own culture, my own people that deal with the whole range of human emotions and experience.  Most LDS fiction gets a deservedly bad rap, but these books offer a glimmer of hope. 

The Golden Age Michal Ajvaz

This book is written by a Czech author and tells the story of a fictional island nation.  But the book does not really have a story per se, it just tells all about this people, their culture, and about a stranger visiting it.  Why does a story need a plot, anyhow?  This book proved to me that it is possible to just write a descriptive novel, full of great ideas but lacking the rigid plot format that English teachers insist every book must have. 

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability David Owen

I just read that the word “sustainability” was voted the most jargony word of 2010.  No one knows what it really means anymore.  Anybody can claim that they are sustainable.  This nonfiction book is basically a collection of essays explaining that the most energy-efficient places are actually the most densely populated places, not far-flung country dwellers who live off of solar power.  His arguments made sense to me, but I of course agreed with him before I even started reading it.

Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

Alyssa read this book first, said she didn’t really like it, and going against her judgment I read it anyway.  Mostly because it’s about time traveling, something which I have looked into myself.  It’s a so-so book, she was right.  I sorta never really actually liked either of the two selfish main characters. 

Blazermania Wayne Thompson

Dad got me this awesome coffee table book, replete with color pictures depicting the history of the greatest basketball team ever.  I devoured it instantly.  RIP CITY!

Didn’t finish:

The Scar China Mieville

Good book.  Probably the most bizarrely creative book I read all year.  I got it from the library, and couldn’t finish it in time.  I want to read more of Mieville in the future. 

Altered Carbon Richard Morgan

This was also from the library, bizarrely creative, but it wasn’t doing it for me. 

Earthsea Ursula K. LeGuin

Alyssa and I have been trying to read this book together for about a year, and we are not very diligent at it.  It is LeGuin, I know, but it is fantasy instead of sci-fi and I like it but don’t love it like the rest of her oeuvre.

Already read, wanted to read again:

1984 George Orwell

Self-explanatory.

Referenced in my book review last year:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay  Michael Chabon

I liked it but couldn’t finish it.  I lost interest.

How We Are Hungry Dave Eggers

I read all of this.  It’s a collection of short stories that I have now all forgotten. 

The Natural Bernard Malamud

I mentioned this in my last book review, and I how I didn’t really like it and like the movie a whole lot better.  That was before I read the novel’s ending, which is a lot more tragic than the movie.  And…I actually loved the original ending because it made me really think of how much of a jerk Roy Hobbes really was (at least in the novel, but it is there a little in the movie too) thus turning my world as I know it upside-down.

Books I’m currently reading:

An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser

Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction Angela Hallstrom

The BLDBLOG Book Geoffrey Manaugh

Books on the docket:

Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic SF  Jetse de Vries

Judge on Trial Ivan Klima

The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

All movies seen since Christmas, reviewed.

Preface
Unbeknownst to you—and for that matter—me, I am also a movie critic.  And you can’t spell criticize without critic!  I think some reviewers forget this, but not me.  It’s pretty safe, since I will admit up front that most movies are awful and I wish I didn’t spend so much time watching them but I blame it on society and the devil so I am exonerated from all charges and can now freely watch all the movies I possibly can with the caveat that I will snarkily comment on all their perceived failures and denigrate their creative time and effort!
To rate movies I will use my patented “outrageous number/ridiculous movie-related object combo” which will absolutely not stand up to any scrutiny or comparison.

(Theater)
Fantastic Mr. Fox
At first I was bitter at seeing another “kid’s movie” in the theater, because the last movie I saw was Where The Wild Things Are.  I enjoyed the former movie more.  It is funny.  It is cool looking.  In fact, it reminds me of how a Roald Dahl book should look.  The humor is an acquired taste, but I had already acquired it half of the way in.
Rating: 56 Boggises, Bunces and Beans

(on video)
The City of Ember
Again, another kid’s movie.  And again, I was pleasantly surprised.  The premise reminds me a lot of The Giver (which for some reason hasn’t been made into a movie) although there are some cheesy parts.  It is kinda creepy, which I don’t think a lot of movies can do to me. 
Rating:  200 Builders

After the Wedding
This is a Danish foreign film that reminds you how good non-Hollywood movies can be, just by mixing in something different like—I don’t know—an unhappy ending and morally ambiguous characters!  You know characters you can’t tell if they are good or bad, then they are good again and I’m all like huh?  Kinda like real life.  That is, if I lived in Denmark and I went to a wedding party and found out the bride was my daughter and her stepdad was dying and wanted me to marry his wife (your ex-lover).  Oh yeah, spoiler alert.  Oops.
Rating:  1,024 Honeymoons

Ivanhoe
Sheesh, all that introductory rambling and I still haven’t excoriated a movie!  Sorry, Mom, but this movie is downright silly.  And I think unintentionally so.  It was a TV movie, granted, but I’ve seen better.  I hope the book isn’t this bad. 
Rating: 2 lances

Twilight
If there is any more written about this movie or these books, the Internet will literally need to have a stake driven through its heart or be shot by a silver bullet or else it will start to suggestively force adolescent sex on you.
Rating: 9 man vampire infield and outfield

(already seen, but recently reseen)
Breach
Rating:  $3-4 billion lost in Government Intelligence
Catch Me If You Can
Rating:  3,000 bounced checks
The Three Amigos
Rating:  20 plethoras of pinatas

My formula for deciding when I can put down a book

How accessible and attention-grabbing do books need to be?  My personal theory of literature (credentials, B.S. in English, BYUI; future prolific author; extensively read--including War and Peace, James and the Giant Peach, and Reader’s Digest) dictates that the very best works would of course have interesting openings.  In practice, however, how many times do I nab a supposed classic and find myself snoring through hundreds of pages of absolutely unADHD-friendly delayed gratification?  Look, if we want and expect kids to keep reading for the sake of reading (perhaps a faulty premise), we need to feed them more saccharine laced fluff more along the lines of Twilight, Goosebumps and Everyone Poops! 
I have extra power such as pride and guilt that gets me through some of the most mundane novels, but we all know kids nowadays (and adults too) can’t be trusted to possess such valuable attributes.  It would be nice to know that you gave a book your best effort and at the same time remove the stigma of leaving a  book unfinished.  Therefore I determined that I personally would develop a formula for when I could put down a novel with a dragging plotline and still maintain a modicum of respectability. 
At first I thought I might settle on an arbitrary number, such as  one-hundred pages in.  But that is unfair to longer books, so then I decided that it must be a percentage.  Of course there are books that reward you for sticking around, but there are also clunkers that leave you scratching your head, wondering why you wasted so much time.  I feel that if you read half of a book, you should be moderately far into a plot by then, so that would be too far and too much reading to set as a benchmark.   A quarter of a book is more reasonable, but I am a literary snob so I will err on the side of the author and compromise with 33%.  Think it out:  if a book does not speak to you on some level after a third has been read, you can safely put it down.  It’s fair.  It’s only right.
Then I got to thinking that I need to have a reason to put the book down, more complex than that it is simply too boring.  So I devised this protocol:  after 11% of the book has been read and there is any tangible feeling that I do not want to continue (manifested by yawns, periods of two days or longer of inactivity, or rampant debauchery) I will draft a first warning that details the setting, plot and characters; after 22% of the book has been read and the feeling continues I will draft a similar warning along with any additional developments, and then at the 33% mark I will write a third and final summary, after which I can safely determine that the book is too boring and I can move on.  Now, if the first feeling that I want to quit is after the 33% mark, only one report is needed.  The same rule applies if the first feeling of quitting is between the 22% and 33% marks, except only two reports are needed.  If these rules are followed, all feelings of guilt will be expunged and all pride will be upheld.  If these rules are broken, guilt shall be doubled and pride will be taken away, even that which I already have.

Joel's consumer power, vol. 23: Overcoming planned obsolescence in your life

 

You know planned obsolescence.  It’s everywhere.  You need to buy a new computer every two years.  You need to get a new cell phone every two years.  It’s when designers intentionally limit the effectiveness of their products so that you will buy more of them.  In the case of technology, they are supposedly getting better and better so that when you buy a computer it is quickly obsolete.

The worst culprit of all:  disposable shaving, and more specifically, the Gillette corporation.  They had me duped for years, buying their el cheapo Mach 3 starter kits and then stealing out of my back pocket with their replacement blades that are so expensive even companies that sell bottled water think they are out of line.  And then, do you know how long those blades last?  Guess.  They are scraping the very skin off of your face on the fourth day. 

The worst part of this whole thing was that I used to be a champion of the Mach 3.  I remember singing its praises:  “Those three blades are so smooth when you haven’t shaved for a few days”  and “I love Mach 3 so much I would literally shave myself while flying a fighter plane that was going Mach 3, in a World War II dogfight.”  I was in bed with Gillette, in bed!

It might have been my imagination, but I think the folks in Gillette’s uber-secret design department gradually cranked up the planned obsolescence over the last few years, so slowly that no one would notice.  You know, like the frog in boiling water.    “Maybe we can get it so that they will buy a new blade every day,” I imagine them saying.

Now, people have been shaving for centuries.  They have not always used Mach 3 blades.  I started looking into alternative shaving methods, which abound on the Internet.  Just Google it, there are a lot of cool ideas, like towel-blotting the razor so it doesn’t get wet (which supposedly stops the blades from going dull), to dipping your blade in rubbing alcohol or mineral oil, to using a double-edged straight razor old school style.

I tried keeping the Mach 3 from getting wet, and I tried dipping it in rubbing alcohol, but for me, it just made me feel like a bigger fool.  I still would cut up my face until I would give in and put on a new razor.

In short, life was miserable, and it was because of shaving.  Now, some of you may be wondering, why doesn’t he get an electric razor?  Well, I had some long standing biases against electric razors, but as you will see, they ultimately become my salvation.  They don’t have as close of a shave as a new Mach 3, and it doesn’t feel as effective at first, and of course they are a bigger up front cost.

My wife, much smarter than I, purchased one for me for Christmas.  I immediately loved my new toy.  It’s so sleek and sexy.  I don’t need to shave in the bathroom.  I don’t need to get wet to shave.  It doesn’t hurt to shave.  The blades (so far) still work after a couple of weeks, and they supposedly will work for an entire year.  Yes, it might take a bit longer to shave than it used to, but that is totally cancelled out by a completely unforeseen factor:  I look forward to shaving!  It is so fun now!

And thus we see that by clever design Joel was able to overcome planned obsolescence in his life through the providence of his loving wife, which is truly “the best a man can get.”

A few recent events…

I’m not sure if I want to keep posting this blog or to Alyssa’s, or both.   I am giving myself a decision period of 45 days. 

• We got a new computer.  It’s an Quadcore HP Pavilion with 6GB RAM, 640 GB Hard Drive, Windows 7, Monitor and Printer.  It’s an early Christmas present.  Alyssa sneaked it out of Office Depot on Black Friday.
• I am enrolled in a online course to receive a post-baccalaureate certificate in Geographic and Information Systems from Penn State.  (This was a major reason to get a spankin’ new computer, and Alyssa fell for it!)
• I got a job.  It is dangerous to say anything about one’s job on the Internet.  Suffice it to say that I work for an anonymous company that pays me money, and that I am not doing anything illegal nor indecent.
• I am going to a Blazer game tonight.  Here’s the twist—it’s in Indiana!  I am excited.  I penciled it on the calendar before we even moved here, because it only happens once a year, like your birthday and the number of times you think about income taxes.
• In fact, I got this whole day off, and I’m getting paid for it.  I cleaned this morning, wrapped a present and am going to run a few errands before tonight’s game.

Joel Feik, We Are Offering You A Great Work-From-Home Job Where You Can Earn Over $100,000/Year!!!

I don't think we as a society are quite to the point where we can all work from home and make tons of money, although I for one would welcome this.  Since as a side job I am a futurist, I know that there will be a period from 2017-2033 where work-from-home jobs will be held in high esteem and over half of the US population will telecommute in their jammies.  This of course predates the eventual abolition of all labor starting 2034ish, which comes about threefold: increased robotization, the changeover to an energy-based currency, and the recreation subsidies.

For now though we must wade through piles of spam and scam trying to pluck out the real jobs when we apply on the Internet.  I bet there are more fake jobs listed than real ones, if we take the aggregate total of Internet job listings everyday.  This is excellent news for the fake jobs economy, which unfortunately has no real effect on the real world.  It is good however for fake people, who are more in abundance than you would think.

Sometimes I wonder if I am deluding myself as to whether I am fake or real.  Judging by the amount of fake job offers I get, I could be persuaded that I am fake.  When did this happen?  But seriously, maybe if I switched over to this fake economy I would be better off. 

Hiding on the side of your Gmail is an outlet to this parallel fakeverse.  It is the Spam filter.  You thought you were getting enough fake job offers?  I dare you to take a peek in this filter, but first avert your eyes.  This is where the fake job offers reside that obviously aren't trying very hard to be real.  A few highlights:  multiple e-mails addressed from a MARK HANCOCK that are exactly the same except that they are always signed from a different person, multiple e-mails from the same "company" that loves to use size 28 font, e-mail job offerings that have unsubscribe links, e-mails that don't mention the name of the company, e-mails that use bad grammar, and e-mails that offer to save you money.

I actually like to check the Spam filter.  I get excited to see if my fake friends have been thinking of me.  I am tempted to de-spam all of them, so that they show up in my regular inbox.  Wouldn't you love to have fake friends that never bug you (except with phony e-mails) and that you never have to do anything for?

Look, we all have pseudo-fake friends on Facebook.  Just take the next logical step into the blindness.  Embrace the scam. 

Inspired ideas that fall outside of my stewardship

Occasionally, I have ideas that I think could change the world and make everything better--or I have ideas that would make a certain specialized thing better.  Unfortunately I usually have ideas that I have no control over nor any influence.  When it comes to some of my religious ideas, we have a nice concept in the church called stewardship.  To the best of my understanding, we use this term in the church to explain the principle that everyone is entitled to personal revelation as well as revelation for those people and things over which they have authority.  It prevents people from having revelations for the whole church unless they are the prophet. 

For example, I have previously discussed my idea that missionaries should be called to their mission when they are a lot younger.  It would be so cool, but I don't think the prophet is taking open suggestions on how to radically change the mission program of the church, because of that pesky stewardship clause.  It makes me wonder, is my inspiration from the devil?  Why did I get it, and not the prophet?  Oh well.

Fear not; I also have many other impractical and hare-brained ideas to reform the church, the NBA, computer games, world hunger, our nation's clogged highways, and the electoral process, to name a few.  Here's a quick fly-by:

• Why can't men in the church have homemaking or enrichment or book clubs or whatever it is the women do?  Exactly, there's no reason.  Also, I had a lot of great ideas for singles wards, more specifically the singles ward I was in.  Except now I've joined the dark side of being married and feel an irresistible urge to shun all single members and treat them as an awkward disease...
• I have a cool idea to prevent lottery-bound teams in the NBA from purposefully losing games to try and get a higher pick.  Once a team has been eliminated mathematically from making the playoffs, the teams go into a consolation playoff after the regular season with the seedings based on the records they had in the last 10 games of the regular season. The winner of these playoffs gets first pick with the runner up getting second, etc.  It rewards teams that are still trying while not overly penalizing teams that just are horrible and deserve a good pick.
• My favorite computer game franchises, Civilization and SimCity, both could be a lot cooler if they had a multiplayer option for collaborative play.  This would allow players to micromanage some aspect of the same civilization or city.  The players would be on the same team, have the same ultimate goals, but have their own duties and responsibilities.  In Civ, one player could be the defense minister, another the science minister, another the foreign advisor, another a provincial governor, etc.  In SimCity, different players could be in charge of Education or Public Safety or Transportation or Zoning.  I can't believe I'm letting this idea out, it could be worth millions.
• To solve world hunger, we can just make food out of the people who die.  Plus, the state of Indiana could feed the whole world, if the world always wanted corn.
  
• We could get rid of the nation's clogged highways if we scrapped our entire car-based paradigm and switched over to rail and bikes!  Cars are unsafe, expensive, ugly, polluting, and most importantly, too self-empowering.
• It is well established that I champion the idea of an overhaul of the current electoral process in favor of a compulsory Internet voting system that removes middlemen representatives and senators.  The day of true democracy is now within our grasp, people!  Technology has provided a way to bring us back to the glory of our ancient Greek ideals!  We need not disenfranchise ourselves by outsourcing our vote to a politician who has their own selfish aims at heart!  We need not be ashamed that we have no land, the wrong age, the wrong skin color, the wrong gender!  We all can vote on every issue!  What, I say, is holding us back from our destiny?!