The California Files

Kindle vs. Books

Earlier today I took a quick break in what is always my most hectic day here at work (Wednesdays) to step next door, into what has to be the area’s largest used-book store. I thought I’d take a look at the mystery/hardbound section.

Yikes! This joint wants more for these books than I could buy them for today new from Amazon! Like, up to $30. I don't know where they get their pricing, but it isn't anywhere near a place called reality.

So, I don’t think so. Not when I can download every title there onto my Kindle for $10. I’ve been resisting doing this because I love the feel of a real book, but I’m faced with two compelling realities: I’m out of room in which to store books; and storing them on the Kindle is just so much less expensive.

So I guess it’s time to stop worrying about acquiring more hardcovers and learn to love technology.

-JFT

Four Killer Books

Recently I’ve read a quartet of books that I’ve found to be very impressive. You may know about these, but just in case, I thought I’d pass their titles, and authors, along.

Let’s start with what’s being called “the Millennium trilogy.” This consists of a trio of books, written by the late Swedish author and magazine editor Stieg Larsson. Their titles are, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl who Played with Fire” and “The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”

They feature two compelling characters who move these stories forward in surprising directions at a furious pace. The first is Mikael Blomqvist, investigative reporter and editor at a magazine called “Millennium.”  The second is Lisbeth Salander, a very odd, very antisocial young woman who just happens to be a genius with computers and math, and who becomes the best research Blomqvist has ever seen.

The Billy Boyle Novels: Good Reads

You may know that I’m a voracious reader. Or maybe you don’t. In any case, I read. A lot. Mostly modern fiction, though I also read a good bit of history.  Anyway, I’ve found an author I thought worth mentioning here.

His name is James R. Benn, and he writes about a character named Billy Boyle, a Boston cop doing investigative duties in the U.S. Army during World War II.

I’m just about done with the third novel in the series now. I found the first one just a bit callow and tentative, the second one better, and this third one quite developed and impressive.

These books tend to have plot lines that seem simple, but turn out not to be. Characters are well developed and Benn does a pretty good job of giving you a feel of the place in which the action is set.

He’s an I.T. guy, of all things, a former librarian, a keeper of books rather than a maker, a writer, of them – at least so the notes on the dust cover say. Whatever. This guy is pretty good.

This isn’t Hemingway or Deighton, mind you. But if you want a good read that resonates with the lingo, places and feel of the European Theater, you might want to give these a try.

-      JFT

Bodies in Motion: Evolution and Experience in Motorcycling – A Book Review

I’ve just read an interesting and thought-provoking book titled Bodies in Motion: Evolution and Experience in Motorcycling. It’s a detailed study of why people ride motorcycles.

Author Steven L. Thompson is a man uniquely qualified to examine this question. Trained as a historian, Thompson – no relation to Your Faithful Servant – continues an enviable career as a pilot, artist, journalist and novelist. For a time one of Car and Driver’s senior editors, a former Cycle World columnist and after many years still a columnist for AutoWeek, he’s driven cars and ridden motorcycles for a living for much of his life, and he’s raced successfully on some of the most challenging racetracks here and in Europe. He’s lapped the famed and wicked Isle of Man Mountain Course at more than 100 mph. In short, he’s experienced some prodigious feats of motoring.

Which is one of the reasons, I suppose, that he’s interested in this book’s core question: Why do we ride?

The notes on the flyleaf of this softback pretty much explain what’s inside. In a word, it says, Thompson “Explores what evolutionary science, psychology, human-factors research, and engineering research can tell us about why some people ride and others do not.”

For instance, Thompson traces some of the sensations we enjoy while riding to those developed, experienced and enjoyed by distant ancestors who lived amid the canopies of ancient forests, moving from branch to branch.

Books, Banjos and Bowling

Uh, I went bowling yesterday. I didn’t actually set out to do this, as usually, I’m pretty happy to sit around reading or pickin’ a banjo. Here’s how it happened:

Seems that during a charity auction, Laura’s company, Your Great Event, bought a “bowling party” at a place called Jillian’s, at Universal City’s City Walk. She invited a number of her clients to come along with her and members of her office team. And she invited me.

So after work, I drove over to Jillian’s. Now, City Walk is located right off the Cahuenga Pass, which contains the Hollywood Bowl on one side and Universal Studios on the other.

That’s spectacularly inauspicious, considering that this is the site of the final battle between the Californios and the Mexican Army during the California revolt in 1845.

Laura, of course, always does things right, so she had snacks laid on – buffalo wings, along with chips and salsa. Want beer? Fine, the bar was both adjacent and open.

Anyway, we bowled. “No problem,” I thought, “I know how to do this.” At least I used to. Harvey (who died an early death last month, the victim of cancer) and J.B. Duryee, brothers with whom I grew up back on Rancho Cascabel, out in the Mojave Desert, and I used to trek into Lancaster to bowl. We took Dennis Siroki, a neighbor kid who was a pal, along with us. Back then, strikes and spares were no problem. Getting a date was a problem, but bowling? No problem at all.

But this time, strikes and spares were extinct. I have flat forgotten how to bowl. Forgotten the hold, the stance, the approach, the swing and the release. What I remember today are sore muscles and a worn-out thumb.

Laura, of course, was typical Laura. The more she worked at it, the better she got, and the better she got, the more energetic and competitive she became. We need to bottle her energy. Sell it. Get rich.

At the end of our time at Jillian’s, I was remembering that Harvey, J.B., Dennis and I all used to bowl in the mid-200s, that we used to think in terms of perfect-score 300-point games.

More poignantly, I also was remembering the last time I bowled. It was the night before returning to boarding school for a new school year. Against his better judgment, my father had granted me use of the family’s ’57 Oldsmobile 88 for the occasion, and while hooning around with the Duryees and Siroki, I managed to smoke its transmission. I don’t remember how I got back to Newbury Park Academy the next day for the agony of the new school year, but it wasn’t in that Oldsmobile.

I’d kind of like to own that Olds today, though at the price of gas these days, it would be about as useful as a useable set of bowling skills – or, for that matter, a set of banjo skills.

All things considered, I’m just better off with a banjo, or a book, in my paws. I think I’ll leave bowling stored safely in my memory, where it belongs.

- JFT