Scholastic Book Fairs

There were two major book events that we looked forward to in elementary school. One we simply called RIF, named after the organization Reading is Fundamental, who would deliver free books of all kinds to the school for us to keep. Usually these were thin books with a lot of pictures, so everyone won. Those of us wanting to learn could learn and everyone else had something shiny and new to look at.

The other event was the school sponsored Scholastic Book Fair fund raising event, during which kid-book giant Scholastic would essentially bring all of their new books and their shiny, illustrated covers and put them up for sale in an attempt to have kids persuade their parents to give them book money. Of course, NOBODY bought books. Not the students, anyway. It may have been that they and their blue collar families couldn't afford the outrageous prices, but it was much more likely that they would have just blown the money on the TOYS, neon bookmarks, and pencils Scholastic always added to their shop each year and that the few who remembered money during their library classes where the fairs were held would buy. I highly doubt I was as cynical about corporate interests and greed infiltrating the youth reading movement as a 4h grader, but just know it's Scholastic I say "for shame" to, not the students buying the shiny pencils. They're kids.

So to conclude, RIF > Scholastic Book Fair

Timequake

Last night I picked up a few books at the library since I'm headed south for vacation this Friday. I couldn't resist borrowing the last work by one of my favorite all-time authors Kurt Vonnegut. I also couldn't resist diving into it right away. Timequake is a story told from both Vonnegut's own non-fiction perspective where he waxes nostalgic about various times of his life, and the perspective of his well known fictional alter-ego Kilgore Trout. The idea is that a "timequake" occurs in February 2001 that forces everyone back to 1991 where they are required to live those 10 years over again, unable to change a thing about how they live it. A replay, if you will, where none of the variables change until February 2001 comes around again and your free will resumes. Since the book met with luke warm reviews when it was released in 1998, I wasn't sure what I was getting into. Then I read the following:

The African-American jazz pianist Fats Waller had a sentence he used to shout when his playing was absolutely brilliant and hilarious. This was it: "Somebody shoot me while I'm happy!" That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody's whim of killing Father or Fats or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that, to quote the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, "being alive is a crock of shit."

Talk about a hook! Go ahead, Mr. Vonnegut, I'm all ears.

Doug Glanville

I feel like I'm the last person to find out that former Philadelphia Phillies CF and University of Pennsylvania alum Doug Glanville frequents the op-ed section of the New York Times with his own column, usually about a combination of life and baseball. But in case I'm not, please check them out here. I think you'll find that you're surprised by the quality and engagingness of his work.

Rock On: An Office Power Ballad

A book recommendation:

I enjoy reading humorous, non-fiction accounts of life by people who never quite made it to where they thought they would. I figure you might as well. In Rock On, we're invited into the life of Dan Kennedy as he begins his longtime dream of working for a record label (Atlantic). If you've been alive in the past several years you know the music industry is a bit of a failing joke, and in this book you get to experience that failing from the inside, even if Kennedy never really addresses the industry's demise explicitly. It's an interesting look at how labels like Atlantic few the "hit making" process and a confirmation that some executives just don't get it.


RockontheBook.com

Company

I thought I might take this moment to recommend a book. Perhaps you might read it while you're supposed to be doing something much more important.

Company, by aussie Max Barry takes shots at modern corporate culture by telling the story of "Jones," a twentysomething who decides to ask of his company "what the f*** do we actually produce?" It's a bit quirky and over the top in the way only an aussie could make it, but it's funny and interesting in a way only a true cube jockey could fully appreciate.