The Year In Reading

Online

New York Times
They have weathered the print to web storm and have come out as the clear victors of both content and style. With Khoi Vinh‘s beautiful redesign in 2006 the Times became a joy to read online. Add writing from Jon Pareles, Mark Bittman and David Pogue and you’ve got one hell of a specialized team in music, food and technology.

The District Weekly
Comprised of ex-pat OC Weekly and Press-Telegram writers, The District is a powerhouse. The design of the paper (and Web site) is top notch and the writing from Theo Douglas, Chris Ziegler, Rachel Powers and Dave Wielenga is non-peril. All involved should be proud. Long Beach has never produced a finer paper, daily or weekly.

Daring Fireball
Before John Gruber began soliciting commercial sponsorships I happily paid to receive his full RSS feed. Gruber is the thinking man’s Apple advocate. His critiques are insightful, his predictions interesting (even if occasionally incorrect) and his hilarious screeds are actually fun to read.

Dodger Thoughts
With the state of local baseball analysis so anemic, I’m incredibly grateful for Jon Weisman‘s careful, passionate and thoughtful writing about my favorite team (of any sport), the Dodgers. Here’s to Russell, Loney, Broxton and The Bison in 2008!

ESPN.com
Michael Weinreb has written the best “Where Are They Now” article that I have ever read. Along with Pete Rose, the article’s subject Bo Jackson, was a childhood hero of mine and Weinreb‘s writing is insightful and deals with thousands of inherent cliches with ease. ESPN.com’s baseball writing is fantastic too: Peter Gammons, Buster Olney, Rob Neyer & Jayson Stark? Yes.

Magazines

Stop Smiling
I am almost at a loss for words when describing Stop Smiling. Really, it is the finest magazine published in America. In the last few months they have published interviews with Robert Towne, Jay-Z, William Eggleston, Robert Altman, Questlove, Tom Waits, Rickey Gervais, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Evans and so on. My subscription currently runs through 2009 if that is any indication of my unbridled enthusiasm. Did I mention that Dave Tompkins occasionally writes for them? Incredible.

Tape Op
Simply put, everyone who makes or loves music should subscribe to Tape Op. It’s smart, passionate, well written and ad supported. That means, FREE!

Esquire
You could continue being a mongoloid or you could read Esquire. Fantastic writing from Chuck Klosterman, A.J. Jacobs and Scott Raab and great black book issues with gold mines of practical advice. Again, one of the few subscriptions I hold.

Books

Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis
A facinating and occasionally dark (okay, off-white) look into the life of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. Author David Michaelis obviously put years of research and time into reconstructing Schulz‘ life and experiences and although upsetting to his close family, the book strives for a deeper, objective understanding of who the man behind the brilliant art of Peanuts really was. Highly recommended.

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
Esquire writer and “human guinea pig” A.J. Jacobs has a need to constantly put himself into rigid lifestyle experiments whether reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica or, as in this book, following all of the commandments of the Bible as literally as possible. Ultimately he finds is impossible but does his best and meanwhile delves deeper into the real words within the Bible than the most devout of believers.

God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
A provocative, seething book, Hitchens draws out all the venom and attempt to provide his own antidote. I’m not entirely sure that is possible in and of itself but this book helped to re-awaken my inner skeptic and for that I will be forever grateful. I wrote more about God Is Not Great earlier this year.

The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
The book has now reached phenomenon status and although I can’t say that I’m currently able to put everything from its pages into practice, it has certainly reminded me that I must look at things askew and that hard work is no substitute for smart systems.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
It wasn’t particularly fun to read but it sure was thought provoking, emotionally searing and unforgettable. McCarthy’s bleak landscape turned the most mundane events into small triumphs and his prose was as beautiful as it was oblique. I’m not entirely sure what to make of the ending which keeps the story wonderfully unresolved in my mind.

God Is Not Great

Last week I finished Christopher Hitchens‘ newest book and current best-seller, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, thus completing a Trinity of recent readings about God which included Richard Dawkins‘ The God Delusion and Francis Collins‘ The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.

While I found Dawkins’ book intelligently written and informative I found it too condescending to be enjoyable. His seeming contempt at all who have believed in the Divine prior to the age of scientific enlightenment, while understandable, is hard to take page after page. Collins, a born again Christian, pro-Darwinist and head of the Human Genome Project, provides a welcome ballast to multitudes of undernourished zealots who find in science nothing more than pagan contradictions to the Holy Word of God. The Language of God provided a number of illuminating anecdotes (and theoretical similarities to Dawkins’ book) but Collins’ own faith seems to be more deeply influenced by the words and concepts of C.S. Lewis than that of the Bible itself.

Hitchens, however, struck a long dormant chord within my internal skeptic and successfully disrupted some of my already tenuous beliefs. Although the book is by no means an all inclusive manifesto it is written with passion, experience, anger, wisdom and, thankfully, a good bit of humor. Hitchens is not above hyperbole; in some ways the scope of the book welcomes misquotes and, occasionally, stereotype. However, he distributes his scathing, common sense critiques across all belief systems and he provides a deep, welcome breadth of first hand experience in cultures and climates very different from those I am familiar with.

Personally, I have long attempted a well balanced world view that succumbed neither to Nihilism nor Fundamentalism but rather walked down the lonely road of the critical thinker. Today, I am further down that road than ever.