[This blog is posted under my name, but was written by my wife Lizby.  -- Mark]

Because my husband works at Lemuria, my addiction to reading has a constant stream of books to feed it. Needless to say, I read quite a bit, and it’s always easy to choose my next indulgence, because my husband picks out books for me. He’s awfully good at it, but recently he outdid himself when he placed a book in my hand called Following Atticus. He bought it because the pictures on the cover and in the center fold were so darn cute, but as soon as I began to read, I realized what a gem he’d hit on.

Every once in a while, I find a book so compelling, that once I’ve read it I find myself unable to stop pestering friends to read it, too. This is one of those books. This true story is about a twenty pound miniature schnauzer and a middle-aged, overweight man and their attempt to hike all forty-eight of the deadly four-thousand foot white mountains in New Hampshire. In the wrong hands this could have been a sappy, cliched, cloyingly sweet story perfect for Disney to take on as their next animated feature. Fortunately, when Tom Ryan authored this book, he did it so masterfully that it transcends the simple plot and becomes so much more than a book about a little dog climbing big mountains.

What made the book so good was the love that Ryan clearly has for three things: literature, nature, and, of course, man’s best friend. As I read, I put a sticky note on every page with a quotation from other authors. By the time I was done there were so many bits of paper sticking up out of the top of the book that it looked like it had a mohawk. I got the sense that Ryan was so intimately familiar with the works of Kipling, Lewis, Frost, Emerson, Thoreau, and countless others, that quoting their words came as naturally as breathing. His descriptions of the mountains made me long to be back in my native New England, and see the those mountains again for myself. His account of his faithful companion captured the essence of “dog-ness” as only a real dog lover could.

In the Prologue of Following Atticus, Ryan says “I have come to judge a good story as one that makes me feel as if I’m losing a friend when I read the final page, close the book, and put it down for the last time”. This was one of those books for me. But here’s the best news – when I finished reading, I discovered that it wasn’t actually over. Little Atticus is still climbing mountains, and he has a blog with beautiful writing and photographs. So buy the book, check out the blog for pictures of all of Atticus’ adventures, and I hope you will be as enchanted by Following Atticus as I was.

It bothered me for a while, right up until I sat down to read and realized that, bad review or no, I found myself wanting to pick the book back up and finish it. Not out of duty, or as a challenge, or even out of spite — just because I had been enjoying it, and I wanted to continue the story. And really, that was enough.

So let’s just address some of the concerns. Yes, the book is about the spread of the Conficker computer virus (or, more appropriately, worm), and the efforts of a small team of computer security experts to defeat it. Yes, that is, to put it mildly, a rather nerdy topic for a serious book. And while Bowden does an admirable job of explaining the long-reaching consequences of such a potentially-damaging worm, he can’t quite escape the fact that he’s writing about security loopholes in Microsoft Windows and lines of code, instead of Army Rangers and Blackhawk helicopters.

The bigger issue to me, however, is that the Conficker worm just isn’t the best story available in computer warfare. Two years after the Conficker worm was discovered, a worm that became known as Stuxnet infected computers in the Iranian nuclear program, eventually sabotaging and damaging some 1000 enrichment centrifuges. I can’t help but wonder if Mark Bowden, already committed to his book and deep into his research, swore under his breath when the Stuxnet story broke.

The decision he faced in his research and writing is really the same decision we face in reading, I think. Somebody may write a book about the Stuxnet worm in the next few years. And it may be a perfectly readable book or even a great book. But we don’t have that book yet. What we do have is a very good book by Mark Bowden, one that covers a legitimately interesting story, and that features some excellent writing. I figure that if someone can point out all the flaws in a book, can list them out and discuss them in great detail, and at the end of it, I still pick the book up and enjoy what I’m reading, then there’s no reason to get worked up over a bad review. Just read and enjoy.

Let me explain what Twitter isn’t. It’s not a bunch of self-obsessed people telling each other what they ate for lunch. Well, there are probably a few folks who still do that, but it’s pretty easy to avoid them. There was probably more of this kind of activity in the early days of Twitter, but pretty soon people figured out that no one else really cared what kind of coffee they ordered that morning.

Instead, Twitter became a place to write and pass along any thoughts that could be condensed into 140 characters — headlines, news, jokes, social commentary, basically anything that could be reduced to a pithy comment. Links and photos can be added to tweets (the individual posts on Twitter) when 140 characters of text just won’t cut it.

There’s plenty of how-to guides for using Twitter out there, so I’m going to skip some of the nuts and bolts. If you’re really lost, start by reading some of the Twitter help pages, and I’d also recommend reading this little guide that covers Twitter “etiquette.” It won’t hurt just to sign up and learn as you go along, however.

I like my Twitter timeline to be a mix of news, commentary, “famous people,” and people I know, but you can always follow and unfollow accounts till you are satisfied with your own mix. Here’s some suggestions.

Lemuria staff:
@LemuriaBooks — This is the main store account, where we post information about events, store news, and general info.
@Maggie4Lemuria — Maggie. Everyone that comes in to ask Maggie for suggestions and recommendations needs to follow her.
@JoeHickman — Joe. Good info on industry news and occasionally coffee beans.
@LisaANewman — Lisa, who also writes the tweets for the @LemuriaBooks account, and plans most of our social media efforts.
@emilyofoz — Follow Emily for all the news from Oz.
@petitchou — Kaycie will be missed when she leaves for Paris, but I expect we’ll still be able to find out what she’s reading.
@mgeoffriau — Me! I tweet about all kinds of stuff…sports, politics, movies, TV, news, and books too.

Industry and book news:
@PublishersWkly — Industry news from PW.
@PublishersLunch — More industry news.
@ShelfAwareness — Same folks that do the Shelf Awareness newsletter for sellers and readers.
@paulbogaards — PR guy at Knopf.
@yrstrulyREL — Director of Accounting Marketing at Random House.
@DonLinn — Publishing consultant.

Some of our favorite bookstores:
@SquareBooks — Our friends in Oxford.
@mcnallyjackson — McNally Jackson in NY.
@fightthestupids – Maple St. Book Shop in New Orleans.
@RainyDayBooks — Rainy Day Books in Kansas City.
@octaviabooks — Octavia Books in New Orleans.
@greenlightbklyn — Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn.
@lanora — Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon, WI.

Some favorite authors on Twitter:
@chuckpalahniuk — Get ready for our Chuck event by following his official Twitter account.
@harlencoben — If you were here for Harlen Coben’s reading, you’ll understand.
@JackPendarvis — Jack Pendarvis
@escherx — Adam Ross
@Danchaon — Dan Chaon

Friends of the store:
@CATHEADVodka — Our favorite vodka, from Mississippi’s first legal still.
@beanfruitcoffee — Joe and Lisa go nuts for this locally roasted coffee.

And finally, possibly my favorite book-related Twitter account:
@NormsBookClub — Comedian and actor Norm McDonald hosts a monthly book club. This month Norm’s Book Club is reading Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer” but the discussion ranges far and wide.

That’s only a fraction of the twitter accounts I follow, but it’s a good start and should include something for just about everyone. Now you tell me — what’s your twitter account? What great twitter account did I overlook? If you know of a great book-related twitterer, please share it!

This time I ended up with a book because of the author – Joe Posnanski. I remember seeing his book The Machine when it was released, and while I appreciated the fantastic cover photo of Pete Rose, neither the subject (the 1975 Cincinnati Reds) nor its author sparked any particular interest in me. I recognized Joe Posnanski’s name from Sports Illustrated, but otherwise was only tangentially familiar with his work.

Since then, I’ve become a fan of his writing through Posnanski’s online columns. Something about his writing resonated with me – his columns for the print edition of SI are a bit tighter, but in his online columns, he’s free to pursue the occasional digression or delve into the minutiae of a subject if there’s good reason to. Even in his ramblier moments, though, he is able to cut through the distractions and capture the most compelling angle (to me) on a subject. Now I’m subscribed to his RSS feed so I am sure never to miss one of his columns.

I did mention The Machine in an earlier blog, but only in passing, and I felt it deserved to be revisited. What’s amazing to me is that there are at least four or five storylines that could be developed into separate books – Sparky Anderson’s unconventional relationship with his players (he openly categorized players into “superstars” and “turds”), Joe Morgan’s development from being a “good little hitter” into the most complete player in the game, Pete Rose’s intense need to demonstrate his greatness, Dave Concepcion’s desire to be considered a superstar and not a turd – but to treat each story separately would de-emphasize how they all interact. Sparky Anderson’s caste system fed Morgan’s arrogance and Concepcion’s insecurity. Rose’s need to validate his own greatness was encouraged by Morgan’s constant reminders that he (Morgan) was the better player. Concepion would tell anyone who would listen that he was a superstar and not, in fact, a turd, but if Morgan or Rose happened to overhear, they would shout him down.

I’ll try to find some non-baseball books to blog about soon, but I make no promises. If you have a nearly insatiable appetite for baseball books like I do, be sure to add The Machine to your reading pile.

The book barely got me through the weekend – Born to Run reads so effortlessly that it’s easy to lose track of time and find that you’ve ripped through half of the book or more in one sitting. Christopher McDougall balances 3 or 4 parallel storylines, skipping back and forth between his search for the Tarahumara Indians, the development of the American ultramarathon, and his own struggles with running injuries and quest to run pain-free.

McDougall captures that perfect tone that provides just enough background information without belaboring the finer details. I’m not a runner, and never have been, but that was no impediment to my enjoyment – on the contrary, the story made me, for the first time in my life, consider the possibility that running could be something other than painful and torturous. And if you are a runner, well, I’d be hard-pressed to recommend a better read to you.

I’ve been reading Bill James’ new book Popular Crime and I’ve been enjoying it so much I thought I would write up something for the blog about it. I sat down in front of my laptop, and as I tried to organize my thoughts about the book, I found that I was preoccupied with the book’s shortcomings – as if I needed to apologize for liking the book. I imagined myself handing a copy of the book to a customer and mumbling, “You probably won’t like it anyway…”

It struck me that too often I’ve tried to evaluate books on a simple, one-dimensional scale, with one end labeled “Unreadable” and the other end labeled “Life-Changing,” as if there’s only one relevant quality that can be measured and communicated. Books like Popular Crime challenge this notion – they may have obvious and possibly numerous flaws, but those flaws are either canceled out by the strengths, or at least they may be overlooked in order to enjoy the strengths.

Let’s get the weaknesses out of the way. The book is long but not comprehensive. James rambles at length; the digressions border on self-indulgent. The author’s research is essentially anecdotal; no footnotes or endnotes will be found. At one point he notes that he found a piece of information on Wikipedia; later, he recounts a story from an article he admits he can no longer find. This habit would be less noticeable if James didn’t frequently criticize other crime writers for their poor research. James repeatedly reminds the reader of how many crime books he’s read. The structure of the book is uneven; it’s organized chronologically, but the amount of attention paid to each story varies greatly – James may explore the crime for ten or fifteen pages, or he may abandon it after two paragraphs. I could go on, but I won’t.

So why read it? Because all those flaws are momentary distractions. Actually, that’s not even true – I’m not distracted by them while I’m reading – they are just little realizations that come to mind when I’m not reading. But when the book is open, it’s just enjoyment. Yes, it’s a bit rambly, but it’s not tedious, just a pleasantly relaxed discussion on some fantastically interesting crime stories. The digressions may be occasionally self-indulgent, but James always returns to the main story before the readers’ interest wanes. The writing style is direct and unaffected; writers are often described as writing in a “conversational” tone, but too often that simply means that their writing is unpolished. Not here — James’ writing is unadorned, devoid of cliche, and readable.

I will unapologetically recommend Popular Crime. Yes, it has flaws, but they are incidental, not fatal. To allow its flaws to distract from one’s enjoyment would be, well, a crime.

I think I’ve been willing to be a little generous about the e-reader threat because, when it comes down to it, I think they are kind of cool. It’s an interesting product, with huge potential. E-readers can do a lot of things that books can’t; I’m just not convinced that e-readers can do everything that a book can.

When I saw the following Amazon ads, however, I had to wonder if we’re not being too polite. The ad campaign is entitled, “Friends.”

Do you feel like your loyalty to physical books can be summed up in the act of dog-earing pages? Doesn’t that feel like a bit of a straw-man? There are lots of great things about books: the dust-jacket design, the sturdy feel of the boards, the creaminess of the paper, the font selected to fit the author’s voice, the arrangement of spines on your shelf, that moment when you stand in front of your bookshelves and scan the titles, searching for the right book or simply admiring them all. I’ve never dog-eared a page in my life*, and I’m a bit insulted that Amazon believes that dog-eared pages encapsulate the very best of my book experience.

*I know plenty of readers do, in fact, dog-ear their pages, and that is their (and your) right. But I remember feeling slightly guilty about highlighting and underlining even in my school textbooks, and I find no compelling reason to deface or damage my own books now. There’s a reason we put a bookmark in each book you take home.

Books in sixty seconds is an amazing thing. I can’t argue with that.

But there are plenty of things that I find amazing, and yet, still limited and greatly flawed. McDonald’s is an amazing restaurant and business model. Almost anywhere in the world, you can find the affordable, familiar, and convenient Big Mac. But I don’t believe that just because McDonald’s is amazing at what it does, that it means it is also superior to other restaurants or that it can replace all other eating experiences. If anything, the oversaturation of fast food has produced a desire to return to some kind of pre-McDonald’s meal: farmer’s markets, homegrown vegetables, locally-owned restaurants, food made not to maximize profit but to be enjoyed as food, to be shared as an experience.

The ad also glosses over some important questions. How did the girl (and guy) find out about the new book? From friends? From advertisements? Is it an author with whom they are already familiar? Good books will always be spread by word of mouth, but does the proliferation of e-books help or harm the reader’s ability to find the book that wasn’t marked from birth for the bestseller’s list?

Five years down the road, will the Kindle remind you of the time you met the author? Can you flip it open and re-read a note the author wrote for you? Can it record the author’s signature? Can you give away a much-loved book to a friend? Does handing over your Kindle for a moment mean the same thing as lending (or borrowing) a book from a friend?

The girl invites the guy to come with her to the bookstore; is the trip such a chore that he (and she) should be relieved to avoid it? I understand plenty of people find their lives too busy and wish for more time at home, but which column does the bookstore experience fall into: stressful hassle or pleasurable leisure? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a customer say, “I could spend all day here [in the bookstore.]” I have never heard a customer say, “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

Is it time for us to take the gloves off? Should we still be willing to share the playground? A playground, I might add, that still feels like it belongs to us, market share be damned, still feels like it belongs to booksellers, because it was built and nurtured and tended by booksellers. I don’t think I’m exaggerating here; books and stories would still exist without booksellers, but not in the same way. I don’t know for certain that it would be much worse without booksellers; perhaps it may even have been better, in some way. But it certainly would have been different, and the influence of booksellers on the market gives us some sense of ownership.

No, the gloves stay on. Not because Amazon’s marketing campaign is right (it isn’t), and not because we’re taking the high road (which would not be a bad thing to do, but it’s not the reason the gloves stay on). The gloves stay on because pitting books against e-readers, as if they are adversaries, hurts everyone. Amazon might be willing to sacrifice the rest of the book industry to boost the growth of the Kindle, but it’s a short-sighted strategy.

So I’ll refrain from taking potshots at the Kindle and the Nook. Our aim isn’t to disparage Amazon or Barnes and Noble; doing so doesn’t develop loyal relationships with our customers. It’s not our job to make you hate them; it’s our job to make you love us.

As quickly as sabermetrics gained popularity, the backlash grew in lockstep. Most of the traditionalists weren’t so extreme as to abandon all statistics, but often claimed that the only statistics needed were the traditionally established categories like batting average, runs, wins, and so on. Every opportunity was taken to mock the sabermetric movement as a bunch of nerds with calculators. In one famous instance, Hall of Famer Joe Morgan claimed in a broadcast that Billy Beane wrote Moneyball and that he (Morgan) did not need to bother reading the book to know that it was wrong.

It’s not surprising, then, that the Oakland Athletics became the poster-child (poster-children?) for the sabermetric movement. Critics were happy to point out that, while the Athletics did win (or finish near the top) of the AL West division for several years, the Moneyball strategy didn’t “work” in the postseason. And when Oakland did finally slip out of contention over the last few years, it was hailed as the death-knell for Moneyball, final proof that the traditionalists were right.

The debate raged on, however, as the sabermetricians insisted that the “Moneyball plan” wasn’t tied to the particular strategies employed by Billy Beane (signing undervalued hitters who could get on base and hit for power, even if they didn’t have a gaudy batting average), but rather in trying to identify market inefficiencies in whatever form they currently take. In Oakland’s case, it involved finding those hitters who could get on base, but after a few years other teams began to realize the value of those hitters, and the advantage disappeared. As the rest of the league fought over the patient power hitters, a new market inefficiency emerged: defense. Fielding ability has always been one of the most difficult skills to capture in statistics, and so as sabermetricians began looking for the best way to evaluate defensive ability, they realized that too often the best defenders were undervalued by teams. The traditionalists were undeterred, however, as they took this new sabermetric shift in priorities as a tacit admission that the “pitching and defense/play the game the right way/bunt ‘em over, hit ‘em in” traditions were, after all, correct.

The war for the soul of baseball has continued and expanded — every aspect of game is subject to intense scrutiny by the sabermetric community for the stated purpose of greater understanding, while the traditionalists cry that their sport is being deconstructed and destroyed in the process, all the beauty and grace lost in the wash of numbers.

Why rehash all this recent history? Because it finally looks like the Moneyball movie may be on the way. If Moneyball on the big screen sounds odd to you, you’re not alone. Moneyball doesn’t seem to lend itself to film in the same way that, say, The Blind Side did. The story centers around a front office executive, and there’s no great triumph at the end, no World Series victory (or even appearance). Perhaps the difficulty of adaptation partially explains why the production went through three writers (Stan Chervin, Steven Zaillian, and finally Aaron Sorkin) and three directors (David Frankel, Steven Soderbergh, and now Bennett Miller). There is cause for optimism, though, with Sorkin, fresh off his Academy Award-winning screenplay for The Social Network, and Miller, who last directed the 2005 film Capote.

I will admit that I was worried about a film adaptation — not only because of the risk of turning a good book into a bad movie, but also because a film would introduce the general public to the sabermetric debate and possibly fan new and higher flames, as well as give the most reactionary traditionalists another opportunity to paint Moneyball, Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics, and anyone interested in understanding the game through statistical analysis as number-obsessed, joyless nerds who are happier studying a spreadsheet than actually watching a real baseball game. This bothers me because I have yet to come across anyone who actually believes that sabermetrics is the only way to experience baseball. Careful statistical study may reveal (or, at least, suggest) who the most valuable hitter or pitcher might be, but it cannot dictate who your favorite player is, or who you most enjoy watching, any more than the MVP award did in years past. We’ve always measured accomplishments in baseball; sabermetrics is nothing more than an attempt at measuring accomplishments in a more rigorous, logical way, and it does not (or should not) diminish the fans’ enjoyment of the game itself.

My hope is that the Moneyball movie will spark more widespread interest in sabermetrics, and that the story will retain the nuance and balance that the book had. The soul of baseball need not be fought over. There’s room for everyone.

It is for this last reason that Jim Miller and Tom Shales’ book was garnering press in the weeks prior to its release. The excerpts made available in advance revealed that the book wasn’t simply an outsider’s perspective on ESPN – it was an account pieced together from interviews with ESPN employees. This is a guess, but I’d say that something like 95% of the book’s text is actually direct quotes from employees, simply arranged and ordered into a narrative, with only occasional text from the authors to give context or summary.

I was concerned that the format would make the book a bit tedious – and since the book is over 700 pages long, tedium is no small worry. The trick, however, is in the editing. The authors have done a wonderful job placing and ordering the quotes to form a coherent and engaging story. It works well, and it makes for oddly funny moments – five or six quotes in a row from various ESPN employees, all complaining about the same person, followed immediately by a quote from the person in question, saying, “I think my time there was great. I think I was well-liked.” If the authors just described the scenario, it’d be a little painful, and not particularly funny, but to read the words of the people, to gauge for oneself how candid or honest each person is being, adds a fascinating element.

ESPN employees sniping at each other and complaining about the company played a large role in the advance publicity of the book. Little, Brown kept the contents of the book secret for weeks, finally lifting the embargo just days before the release date. Readers were not disappointed – the number and size of the egos meant for plenty of TMZ-ish celebrity gossip. Chris Berman, Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, Mike Tirico, Rick Reilly, Bill Simmons, and virtually every big name in the ESPN universe is targeted at one time or another. Some of it is merely petty, and some of it is legitimately disturbing.

Fortunately, the gossip column is just a part of the book, and not its entirety. There’s plenty of material on the early days of ESPN, the expansion into the largest cable network, and the forays into radio, magazines, and the array of secondary channels. If anything, there’s so much information that it’s a little daunting, but the format makes it easy to read in chunks – I’ve had it sitting on my bedside table for a couple of weeks, and it’s perfect whether you want to pick it up and read 5 pages or 50 pages at a time. A must read for the sports fan, especially for those interested in the role of media and the evolution of journalism.