{"id":283,"date":"2010-06-19T12:28:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-19T17:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/?p=283"},"modified":"2010-06-19T16:33:59","modified_gmt":"2010-06-19T21:33:59","slug":"beach-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/?p=283","title":{"rendered":"Beach Books"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re off to North Carolina to the beach next week so in preparation I went to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.acpl.lib.in.us\/\">Allen County Public Library<\/a> to stock up on books for the beach.<\/p>\n<p>The list:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">In Fed We Trust<\/span> by David Wessel.\u00a0 Recommended by son Josh so I could &#8220;understand what he writes about all day.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The World Without Us<\/span> by Alan Weisman.\u00a0 Imagine the world without people.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">A Long Way Down<\/span> by Nick Hornby.\u00a0\u00a0 Hornsby&#8217;s a good writer, always worth a read.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Great Gatsby<\/span>.\u00a0 You know who wrote it.\u00a0 Son Josh is always quoting it at me, and it&#8217;s one of the many holes my reading of American Literature.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Gum Thief <\/span>by Douglas Coupland.\u00a0 You can&#8217;t go wrong with Coupland.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Dead Hand <\/span>by David Hoffman.\u00a0 Pulitzer Prize winning story about the Cold War.\u00a0 The success of this book is due in part to Josh Zumbrun, see page 486.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">A Stained White Radiance<\/span> by James Lee Burke.\u00a0 An early Robicheaux novel that I haven&#8217;t read.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Blue Horse<\/span> by Rick Bass.\u00a0 I have no idea what this is.\u00a0 It was on the new fiction shelf and had a cool cover.\u00a0 That&#8217;s much the same method I use to pick wine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s it.\u00a0 I know, I know.\u00a0 No way that&#8217;s going to last me a week.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll pull a few books off the shelves here at home that I&#8217;m perpetually trying to finish.\u00a0 Most notably:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Le Ton Beau de Marot <\/span>and <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I am a Strange Loop<\/span> both by Douglas Hofstadter.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve been bogged down about halfway through both of these for years.\u00a0 This is the year I&#8217;ll finish them!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I also picked up a few CD&#8217;s to supplement our collection for the drive.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Les Miserables, the original Broadway cast.\u00a0 If the soundtrack is as long as the play, that&#8217;ll be all we need.\u00a0 It&#8217;s only a 14 hour drive.<\/li>\n<li>Mamma Mia! Original cast.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Need some cheery fluff after suffering through Les Miz.<\/li>\n<li>Best of Johnny Lee Hooker.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Debbie likes the blues.\u00a0 I needed a sop to throw to her, because she&#8217;s really gonna hate:<\/li>\n<li>Walking Distance, Robert Earl Keen.\u00a0 <strong>Real<\/strong> country music, like James Hiatt and Lyle Lovett.\u00a0 Speaking of which&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Pontiac, Lyle Lovett.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s a start.\u00a0 I&#8217;m still concerned it&#8217;s not enough.\u00a0 I may need a big fat brainless blockbuster novel to round it out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>A later revision.<\/p>\n<p>Debbie gave me two books for Father&#8217;s Day to round out my collection for the trip.\u00a0 The consummate librarian, she picked better books for me than I did for myself:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid<\/span> by Bill Bryson.\u00a0 What&#8217;s not to like about the memoirs of a befuddled, beer-swilling, travel writer?\u00a0 Seriously, Bryson is constantly amusing, almost as amusing as:<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I&#8217;ll Mature When I&#8217;m Dead<\/span> by Dave Barry.\u00a0 And there&#8217;s no one funnier than Dave Barry, so the list ends here.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re off to North Carolina to the beach next week [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}