Ray Bradbury died this week at the age of 91, leaving behind an enormous legacy in literature, one that I fear will be excessively defined as a canon of science fiction, rather than merely of great writing.
My favorite Bradbury novel is the gothic horror story Something Wicked This Way Comes
He laughed, then stopped.
For he though he heard a soft tread
Off in the subterranean vaults.
But it was only his laughter
walking back
through the deep stacks
on panther feet.
That last sentence has stuck with me for over a decade since I first read the novel. Not only is the idea of walking “on panther feet” a phenomenal, evocative image, but there’s poetry in the sentence itself: The rhyme between “back” and “stacks;” the assonance with those two words, “laughter,” and “panther;” the way the sound recedes as you read (or say) the sentence, almost like the words are descending a staircase away from you. It’s just one line in a 200-page book, not even a critical line in the story, but it’s one bit of evidence that Bradbury was more than just a great writer of speculative fiction – he was a great writer of prose.
To the links…
First, my own content:
* American League draft recaps.
* National League draft recaps.
* My day one recap.
* My June 5th chat, which took place during rounds 2 and 3.
* Where each team’s top drafted prospect ranks in their farm system.
* Podcasts: Thursday and Tuesday, plus my Tuesday hit with Colin Cowherd.
And from others…
* Why It’s Ethical to Eat Meat, by Michael Ruhlman. I’m on board with all of this except the quotes from the farmer about the animals being “good with it.” If they had that kind of cognitive ability, we wouldn’t eat them at all, right?
* The New Neuroscience of Choking, by the superb Jonah Lehrer. I have two main problems with applying that study to the question of whether clutch or un-clutch players exist in MLB. The larger one is that the subjects were not highly trained since youth to perform the task they were then asked to perform with the reward promised to them. The smaller one is that my longtime argument about choking isn’t really addressed here – that players who are unable to perform under pressure would likely be weeded out long before reaching the majors, because pressure situations exist at all levels of baseball, and merely playing baseball at all in front of a crowd, knowing that your career hinges to some extent on your performances in front of scouts and your statistics, is in and of itself a pressure situation. That stance, of which I believe Occam would approve, is fully compatible with the study’s findings.
* To Grow A Craft Beer Business, The Secret’s In The Water, from NPR. Have they stepped up their coverage of food/drink subjects, or was I just behind the curve in noticing it?
* Cuisines Mastered as Acquired Tastes. Are non-native chefs who learn “ethnic” cuisines somehow at an advantage because they are more willing – or able – to think outside of the box?
* McSweeney’s Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do. Very witty but with some useful tips in here … including some I should probably try myself.
* Bonus link: An interesting infographic on how healthful, local food creates jobs. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the report and data behind it, though.
on their bookshelf – including their pork rillette, duck speck, and house-cured salmon. The rillette was very tender, held together with bacon fat, but a little underseasoned for me, so it needed help from the whole-grain mustard and homemade pickles provided on the plate. The paper-thin salmon needed nothing else, not even the hit of acid I usually crave when I eat cured or smoked salmon, among the best dishes of its kind I’ve had. Speck is a smoked product usually made from the pig’s hind leg or thigh, like prosciutto, but Ludivine uses duck breast instead; the resulting product was salty and very smoky, pairing well with the blackberry-tarragon “marmalade” also provided on the platter but too strong to eat on its own. (Nitpick: It’s not marmalade without citrus rind, unless we’re speaking a language other than English.)
and my friend Peter Reinhart’s 
, an exhaustively researched look at the 2008 financial crisis from the perspective of executives inside the various investment banks that were teetering on the brink of collapse, as well as the perspectives of the various government executives trying to stave off a depression. It is an outstanding work of investigation, compiled from what I assume is an enormous number of sources, but the result did very little to explain the causes of the crisis (as in, how did these very bright bankers end up in such stupid positions?) and was a very dull, clinical listen.
, which looked at the crisis from the perspectives of several investors who saw it coming and reaped huge rewards, and while it’s not as thorough and is significantly shorter, it was far more entertaining and yet also went more into the causes of the meltdown. Lewis is a fantastic prose writer, and even if that book shared some of the, um, sharpening tendencies he showed in 
(the book, not the film), making his villains 
(currently $5 through that amazon link) and Portugal. The Man’s 
(in spite of one of the worst band names I’ve ever heard).
is the one non-fiction book in this bunch, a history-of-math tome that incorporates a fair amount of philosophy, physics, and religion all in a book that’s under 200 pages and incredibly readable for anyone who’s at least taken high school math. The subject is the number zero, long scorned by philosophers, theologians, and even some mathematicians who resisted the idea of nothing or the void, yet which turned out to be critical in a long list of major scientific advances, including calculus and quantum mechanics. I generally prefer narrative non-fiction, but Zero moves as easily as a math-oriented book can get without that central thread. 
is one of three major Hammett short-story collections in print (along with The Continental Op and the uneven The Big Knockover), and my favorite for its range of subjects and characters without feeling as pulpy as some of his most commercial stories. The twenty stories are all detective stories of one sort or another starring several different Hammett detectives, including early iterations of Sam Spade and the character who eventually became the Thin Man, as well as a western crime story that might be my favorite short piece by Hammett, “The Man Who Killed Dan Odams.”
for several years, usually any time I mention reading another book that deals with the Vietnam War and/or its aftermath. The book, a set of interconnected stories that feels like an novel despite the lack of a central plot, is based heavily on O’Brien’s own experiences in that conflict, especially around death – of platoon mates, of Viet Cong soldiers, of Vietnamese civilians, and of a childhood crush of O’Brien’s who died at age 9 of a brain tumor. The writing is remarkable, more than the stories themselves, which seemed to cover familiar ground in the genre, as well as O’Brien’s ability to weave all of these disconnected stories into one tapestry around that central theme of death and the pointlessness of war. The final story, where he ties much of it together by revisiting one of the first deaths he discussed in the book, is incredibly affecting on two levels as a result of everything that’s come before.
, a top-ten novel for me that hit on every level. Dance is just too introspective, without enough of Murakami’s sort of magical realism (and little foundation for what magical realism it does contain) and no connection between the reader and the main character.
(filmed as The American) and listening to Jonah Lehrer’s 
. The Booth book is on sale through that link for $5.60.
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