WordWacky

I have to admit, when my ex-girlfriend first told me about Car Talk, I was skeptical. As she was the consummate driver, we were probably in the car when their show came on the radio, and she was probably, in her undeniable wisdom, telling me how great Click and Clack were. And I probably said something like, “A show about cars?”

But I listened, and she was right (she would say I was often wrong). It was more than a show about cars.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi, or Click and Clack, as they call themselves in honor of aging cars, are brothers who have been solving people’s car dilemmas on the radio since 1977. They became mechanics in 1973, originally opening a do-it-yourself garage that became The Good News Garage, a more traditional garage. Says their NPR biography:

In 1977, Tom and Ray were invited to the studios of NPR member station WBUR in Boston, along with other area mechanics, to discuss car repair. Tom accepted the invitation, and when he was invited back the following week, he asked, “Can I bring my brother, Ray?”

The show is a combination of commisseration about cars — from brand names to mechanical quirks — to real problem-solving. Their advice is human and opinionated, and often the brothers disagree with one another. More than once I’ve heard them settle bets between spouses and friends. And my own personal favorite part of the show is the Puzzler. For example, this one from July 28 of this year:

There is a series of nine numbers: 335 443 554 __ followed by a blank. What’s the blank, and why?

Give up? Here’s the answer.

Thanks to Doug at Car Talk who was kind enough to write back to me with what Tom and Ray were reading! Authors themselves, Tom and Ray have a new book out: Ask Click and Clack - Answers from Car Talk.

Ray is reading a book by one of the guests on Car Talk, a book called Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt.

Traffic is something I think about frequently, and at great length. I think (and speak) in phrases punctuated by expletives worthy of my Bronx childhood, as I address other drivers from the safety of my vehicle, which is invariably crawling along I-5 or SR-520.

Mary Roach from The New York Times says of Traffic, “My solution to the nation’s vehicular woes would be to make this good book required reading for anyone applying for a driver’s license.”

The driver of this book has a blog, How We Drive, that’s worth checking out, too.

The book Tom is reading, The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil, held me hostage. I looked it up on Google Books, and I found there were a good number of pages available to me. Within minutes I had lost track of the task at hand, and I was convinced that our destiny was to become human-computer hybrid beings.

The Singularity, as Kurzweil describes it, is the consequence of the speed with which technology is advancing. He predicts that technology and biology will merge. On page 9, Kurzweil says, “There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine, or between physical and virtual reality.”

Futurism of this sort is perfectly familiar to us — in the realm of the fantastic, books and movies that we categorize as science fiction. But this is not a novel, and it’s not sci-fi. There is a Singularity Summit happening this October 25 in San Jose. Speakers include representatives of MIT, Berkeley, Intel, and IBM. It’s put on by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, whose mission is: “In the coming decades, humanity will likely create a powerful artificial intelligence. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) exists to confront this urgent challenge, both the opportunity and the risk.”

Bill Gates said of Kurzweil that he is “The best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.” And Janet Maslin in The New York Times says the book “is startling in scope and bravado. Mr. Kurzweil envisions breathtakingly exponential progress, and he is merely extrapolating from established data.”

It does not escape my notice that Tom is reading a book by an author named Ray, and Ray by one named Tom. Even in their reading material, Click and Clack are inseperable.

Who’s Craig Newmark? You may not be familiar with the name, but if you’re an internet junkie living in a big urban center, you’re already on a first name basis with him, I promise. Craig, as in craigslist.org. When I mentioned I was doing this post, someone responded, “Oh, there’s a Craig?”

I used to want to write a book called My Life on Craigslist. (Yes, before someone made a movie.) For many years, almost nothing major has happened in my life without Craig as the middleman. I met my most fabulous ex-roommate — and now good friend — through Craigslist. I bought one car and sold another on Craigslist. Many free items, including a giant wooden arbor that we had to pry from the ground, have found homes in and around our house, courtesy of Craigslist. To say I’m a fan of Craig’s is a gross understatement.

Yes, there is a Craig, and from everything I’ve heard, he’s a very cool, approachable guy. He even personally responded to my e-mail when I asked what he was reading.

Craig is reading Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. First off, let’s stop and admire Craig’s dedication (and even more so, Stephenson’s) — this is a 937 page novel. Once upon a time that wouldn’t have been too big a deal, but these days novelists seem to tend to keep things short. If a novel nears 400 pages, I’m surprised.

It should be difficult to say what a book that approaches 1000 pages is about. If it’s not about pretty much everything, it should have been edited down, in my opinion. And that seems to be what Stephenson’s book is about: nearly everything. Said one Amazon customer review, “It is a difficult book to describe to others. In some ways, I felt like I was reading a novelization of Goedel, Escher, Bach.”

From the publisher’s description: “Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside ’saecular’ world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals.”

Booklist starred its review of Anathem, saying, “The novel is beautifully written …and, even though it runs to nearly 1,000 pages, it feels somehow too short, as though we’re made to leave this carefully constructed world and return to our own before we’re quite ready. A magnificent achievement.”

Michael Dirda of the Washington Post had not-so-flattering things to say about it:

[Anathem is] “…ultimately grandiose, overwrought and pretty damn dull. That’s an awful thing to say about a novel as formidable as Anathem, but there’s no getting around it. The made-up language is rebarbative (though often clever), the plot moves with elephantine slowness, and much is confusing (the process of decipherment actually drives the book, as characters and the reader Try to Figure Things Out), and every so often we just stop for a long info-dump or debate about cosmology, philosophy, semantics or similar glitzy arcana.”

I had to look up the word rebarbative (repellant), but otherwise I was left wondering if Dirda was not just the wrong audience for the book.

Now, I’m not too much of a sci-fi reader, but if there’s one place I do tread in the sci-fi world, it’s intellectual sci-fi. I like that sci-fi is involved with big ideas, though I sometimes feel cheated that there has to be a fantastic setting so that they make sense (this is, I think, what defines me as not into sci-fi). Stephenson, whom I admit I’ve never read, is among the giants in that realm. One blogger calls Snow Crash, Stephenson’s 1992 cyberpunk bestseller, one of the ten best intellectual science fiction novels.

If you want to attend a reading of Anathem and happen to live in the Portland area, Seattle-based Stephenson will be at the Bagdad Theater tomorrow, September 16 at 7 p.m. $5, tickets available online.

[Editor's note: Kudos and thanks to Adrianne and Seth at This American Life for finding out for me!]

Ira Glass is one of my heroes. He’s been in public radio for 30 years, beginning as a humble intern. I became familiar with him because of his radio show, This American Life, a weekly production of Chicago Public Radio, syndicated by Public Radio International on over 500 stations, including Seattle’s own KUOW. In 2007 the show hit the boob tube on Showtime, condensed to a half-hour program.

If you’ve never seen or heard the show, you’re really missing something. Every week there’s a theme (this week’s is “The Devil in Me,” and last week’s was “Something for Nothing”), and talented writers tell true stories about their experiences with the theme. The stories are often documentary style, including interviews and sound/video clips of the subjects of the tales. I tune in as often as possible — on my station the show’s at 7 p.m. on Saturday, repeating at 11 a.m. Sunday morning.

So when I started thinking of celebrities to ask about their reading life, Ira Glass came to mind quickly.

Enough already: what’s he reading? Glad you asked. Here is what I heard Ira is reading now:

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
I haven’t read Then We Came to the End, but I’ve seen people reading it on the bus. With its yellow post-it note cover, it’s eye-catching. I assumed it was an office-set story, and I guess it was well marketed by its cover, because that’s precisely what it is.

Some reviews:

“Ferris has the downward-spiraling office down cold, and his use of the narrative ‘we’ brilliantly conveys the collective fear, pettiness, idiocy and also humanity of high-level office drones as anxiety rises to a fever pitch. Only once does Ferris shift from the first person plural (for an extended fugue on Lynn’s realization that she may be ill), and the perspective feels natural throughout. At once delightfully freakish and entirely credible, Ferris’s cast makes a real impression.” Publisher’s Weekly

Information professionals crave information, and when it is denied them — who is going next, how many and why — they spin superstitious theories and adopt curious totems. The employees discover that the office coordinator keeps tabs on which furniture belongs in which offices, and they fear that their chairs — scavenged from laid-off peers with better furniture, in a round-robin so complex no one remembers whose Aeron was originally whose — will get them fired. The New York Times

And you really must check out the book’s website, with its flash intro, office floor plan, and MySpace pages for all of the characters.

But wait… there’s more. He’s also reading:

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

I love Sarah Vowell. Her regular spots on TAL always thrill me, not only because she’s sharp and funny, but also because of her voice. The lazy-sounding, deadpan delivery only serves to increase her hilarity.

If you haven’t heard one of her spots on the show, I suggest you listen to one before buying this book (which you can’t quite do yet, since it’s not out until October 7, but you can preorder from your favorite indie bookstore, or on the ‘net from Powell’s). Here’s a TAL with a Sarah Vowell segment, so you can read the book to yourself in her voice. It can’t help but be more enjoyable that way.

The Wordy Shipmates, according to the publisher’s comments, is an examination of the Puritans of the past and their legacy to the present. Among the questions her essays ask and answer: “What was the Puritans’ pet name for the Pope? The Great Whore of Babylon. What is the lesson of the Pequot War? Why, don’t fire one of your military’s embarrassingly few Arabic translators just because he’s gay, of course.”

Hmm…. According to Publisher’s Weekly, her style in The Wordy Shipmates is “less colloquial than her previous books,” but Kirkus says, “Fans will be pleased to see that Vowell’s admittedly smart-alecky style is alive and well: It’s not every historical monograph that tosses together Anne Hutchinson and Nancy Drew, Dolly Parton and John Endecott.” Is it less colloquial, but still smart-aleky? We will have to see in October.

So thanks, Ira Glass, for responding, and to those involved in helping me get my information!

So maybe you’re not famous, but I want to know anyway: what are you reading?

This is a question I asked, via a television show’s website. After a few back-and-forth communications, I actually received an answer. More on that in a bit.

I asked because this is a question I would like to promote. I wish more people asked me this question. I wish more people asked politicians and celebrities and babysitters and potential employees this question. I wish the information on what people are reading was volunteered more often, as I have made my own reading material public on this page and my Goodreads profile.

Why? Several reasons:

1. What people read tells you something about them. It shows their taste and their intellect, at least, but can also clue you in on their politics, their personality, their hobbies, their values, their modernity…. When I visit someone for the first time, the first thing I look at in their homes is their bookshelves. Don’t have a bookshelf? That tells me something, too.
2. People who do not receive the Sunday Times or another newspaper that still deigns to publish book reviews should have some idea what to read. We covet the same clothes and cars as celebrities. Why not books? Someone besides Oprah should be telling people what to read.
3. Literacy. Can you imagine a day when a ten year old is reading a book they heard Brittany or Justin – or Obama, perhaps – was reading? The only way to encourage our celebrity-obsessed youth to sit down and read may be by setting them a high-profile example.
4. Bookstores – if you haven’t figured out that independent bookstores are having some trouble, and that I support them, you haven’t been listening.

So what is this television personality reading, already? I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find that out — this post has become a little long.