W O T - W H A T

alive, but coughing. pneumonia ruled out by the doc, luckily.

and the kiddo is on a 4am wake-up bender. will resume posting (and writing) next week!

[binary match-up by Scott Abelman, via flickr.]

I know lots of people who mainly read books only once they’re in bed for the night. The ideal bedside book is one that holds your interest long enough to wipe out the day and get you set for a good night’s sleep. Nothing that will keep you up late, nothing that will put you to sleep right away.

I myself keep various books at the bedside, and in many ways they’re similar to bathroom books. Novels are rough–not enough time. Short story collections are okay–if the stories are short enough. Poetry is ideal, as are letters. David Ferry’s translation of Horace’s Epistles just finished a tour of duty in the bathroom next to my office.

So all of this is mere preamble to telling you all that I’ve got a new bedside book, Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, by Charles Petzold, and it just may be the ideal bedside book.*

This book gets into the nitty gritty of how computers really work, like on an electrical switch level. I’m only about a hundred pages in, and Petzold’s already shown how one can construct a simple binary adding/subtracting machine out of parts available at Radio Shack. (He doesn’t actually suggest you attempt such a thing, but he demonstrates that the technology underlying today’s computers has been around for quite a while. It just took a few geniuses to get clever on that shiz.)

The pages are full of clear diagrams, and Petzold is really good at reminding the reader what everything is. Never have I loved the phrase “as you’ll recall” so much.

Needless to say, there’s tons of information to keep track of while reading the book. But it’s not emotionally complex information. My tired brain knows exactly when it is still hanging on to stuff and when it has just given up for the night. I’ll turn the page and my head goes: “okay, enough.” Fold down the corner and go to sleep.

No eyes-crossing attempt to get through to what happens, no “did I already read that paragraph?” no trying to recall relationships and moods and all that deeply human stuff literary fiction is made of.

Just page after page of problems and clever solutions and, yes, ones and zeroes.

*for semi-geeks like myself.

[via Josh Wolk!]

david rees’ get your war on, now animated!

[via LA Observed]

LOS ANGELES, Calif.–As former editors of the Los Angeles Times Book Review (1975 through 2005), we are dismayed and troubled at the decision by Sam Zell and his managers to cease publishing the paper’s Sunday Book Review.
This step signals the end of an era begun 33 years ago when Otis Chandler, then the paper’s publisher and owner, announced the debut of the weekly section. Since then, the growth of the Los Angeles metropolitan region and the avidity of its numerous readers and writers has been palpable. For example, every year since its founding in 1996, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books has attracted upwards of 140,000 people to the UCLA campus from all walks of life throughout Southern California. Four hundred writers from all over America typically participate. The written word is celebrated. It is the most significant civic event undertaken by the Los Angeles Times to deepen literacy and to strengthen the bond between its news coverage and its far-flung community of readers. But without the Book Review itself, the book festival will be a hollow joke.

The dismantling of the Sunday Book Review section and the migration of a few surviving reviews to the Sunday Calendar section represents a historic retreat from the large ambitions which accompanied the birth of the section.

To be sure, no section of any newspaper can remain hostage to past ways of covering the news of the day. We are convinced, however, that the way forward is to increase coverage of our literary culture — a culture that every day is more vibrant and diverse in the thriving megalopolis of Los Angeles.

Angelenos in growing number are already choosing to cancel their subscriptions to the Sunday Times. The elimination of the Book Review, a philistine blunder that insults the cultural ambition of the city and the region, will only accelerate this process and further wound the long-term fiscal health of the newspaper.

We urge readers and writers alike to join with us as we protest this sad and backward step.

Sonja Bolle
Digby Diehl
Jack Miles
Steve Wasserman

Details and pics.

Um, what? The guy is 36 years old and has won 4 of 5 events this year. The one event he did not win was won by a wildcard, so technically Slates is the only one of the top 44 to have won an event thus far, and we’re almost halfway through the season.

Did I mention he is 36?

I’m 36.

I can barely touch my toes.

From Friday’s LAO:

Apparently the last standalone Sunday Book Review-slash-Opinion section will run in the Times on July 27. After that, books coverage will be in Calendar and Sunday’s opinion pieces will run in the A section — and on the web. We reported Wednesday on other sections ending sooner.

A new story by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

…in The New Yorker!

Attribute the paucity of posts to my progress on the next novel.

But don’t think I’ve forgotten about you.

I made this joke up the other day.

Q: Why was the pediatrician so pushy?

A: He had little patients.

[No, not this boat.]

My review of Nam Le’s short story collection The Boat appears in Sunday’s LA Times Book Review.

(Don’t feel like clicking? “Reading these stories, you’re left feeling that Le has been all over the planet and has poked at everything with a sharp stick.” I liked it. A lot.)