Katrina anniversary coverage: SPT

I'm proud of the work my employer, the St. Petersburg Times, did on Katrina and its anniversary.
You can see the Times' work via this link.
Times photographer Kathleen Flynn took the picture of Sadie James, which ended up on the cover of Time magazine last year. Flynn kept in touch with James and photographed her again recently. She also recorded James talking about her life since that photo. It's powerful. Access it here; click on Sadie James.

Katrina anniversary coverage: Times-Picayune

Here's a better link to six days worth of Times-Picayune coverage. Two more stories stand out. One is on the horror of the Convention Center as the storm hit. That's surely what I will always think of when I think of Katrina, the poor people just marooned at the convention center, desperately talking to the TV cameras but unable to get food, water, comfort.
The other is about a Metairie man who used his fishing boat to rescue people off the roofs of their flooded homes. The matter-of-fact way he went about helping them is touching and decent.

David Foster Wallace on tennis, again

David Foster Wallace wrote a new essay on his old obsession -- tennis -- for last week's New York Times. He waxed rhapsodic about Roger Federer. (Too bad, though: It looks like Wallace got bit by the correction bug, too, involving the mechanics of a Federer vs. Agassi match. The correction is appended to the story.)
In other Wallace news, The Howling Fantods, a fan site, says a 10th anniversary edition of Infinite Jest arrives later this year, with an introduction by David Eggers. The Eggers intro is a little weird to me. I like and respect Eggers (especially for his work with teaching writing to underpriviledged children), but I think Wallace is better known and more accomplished, so why is Eggers writing the intro? On the other hand, maybe Wallace asked Eggers to write the intro, because Wallace has published pieces before in Egger's literary project McSweeney's. All just speculation on my part.
I was thinking the other day how much I would like to read IJ again. Maybe the anniversary is just the occasion.

Katrina anniversary coverage: Bush's photo

Here's a case of two newspapers doing the same story with weirdly similar leads.
First, The Washington Post on Saturday. Headline: "Katrina's Damage Lingers For Bush." Lead:

For Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), three images define George W. Bush's presidency: Bush throwing out the first pitch of the 2001 World Series at Yankee Stadium, Bush with a megaphone atop the rubble of the World Trade Center -- and Bush staring out the window as Air Force One traversed the Gulf Coast thousands of feet above the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
The first two images epitomize strength and resolution, the image the Bush White House likes to cultivate. But in one year's time, the last one -- of the president as aloof, out of touch, even befuddled -- all but erased the memory of the others, according to pollsters, pundits and Republican politicians who say they have suffered in the wake of the president's decline.

Next up, The New York Times on Monday. Headline: "Years After Katrina, Bush Still Fights for 9/11 Image." Lead:

When the nation records the legacy of George W. Bush, 43rd president and self-described compassionate conservative, two competing images will help tell the tale.
The first is of Mr. Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, bullhorn in hand, feet planted firmly in the rubble of the twin towers. The second is of him aboard Air Force One, on his way from Crawford, Tex., to Washington, peering out the window at the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina thousands of feet below.
If the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina called into question the president’s competence, that Air Force One snapshot, coupled with wrenching scenes on the ground of victims who were largely poor and black, called into question something equally important to Mr. Bush: his compassion.
A year later, he has yet to recover on either front.

Katrina Anniversary coverage: the weekend before

I'm going to blog this week about the Hurricane Katrina anniversary. I plan to highlight the news articles I find most compelling, interesting and insightful. Here's the first installment.
The Times-Picayune's story "On Their Own" takes a hard look at the local planning process and Mayor Ray Nagin's role. The big question: Should the government follow the lead of the people who return, or should it set the agenda for rebuilding? The TP shows that, so far, the local government has not set much of an agenda, and that's not a good thing.

Even with the huge infusion of federal aid on the way, it's unthinkable that all parts of the city will thrive, most observers agree.
At the neighborhood level, that will have unpleasant consequences.
Shortly after the storm, experts warned strenuously that in the absence of a carefully planned and controlled revival, New Orleans would succumb to the "jack-o'-lantern effect" -- a gap-toothed revival in which renovated homes were interspersed with blighted and abandoned structures that eventually would bring down the neighborhood.

The Washington Post decided to take a look at rebuilding on a single street, and was able to contact 15 of 18 families who before the storm lived on Beechwood Court in New Orleans East. The results of their survey aren't particularly heartening. Ten families said they were unlikely to return.

Many asked: What is there to come back to?
"We loved our neighborhood, we loved our life, we loved our home," said Denise Charbonnet, 53, a Navy contractor whose job was transferred from New Orleans to Memphis. "But it's not the same. There are no stores. There are no gas stations. They do have streetlights on the main streets, but within the communities, it's dark. Can you imagine being the only person living on a block?"

The Post also has a compelling story on Baton Rouge, which absorbed a great number of evacuees from New Orleans. At times, Baton Rouge's infrastructure seemed taxed beyond its means, and class differences emerged between the black communities of the respective cities.

Jeff LeDuff, the city's no-nonsense police chief, was credited by many with keeping order in the city. There was aggressive policing, officers rolling en masse to reports of crimes. "I'm willing to be my brother's keeper. That's what I said at the time," says LeDuff now, referring to the immediate aftermath of Katrina. "And I also said, 'While my brother is in Baton Rouge, he must behave.' "
Some assailed LeDuff, who is black, and his police force, saying they were too aggressive. But Mayor Melvin "Kip" Holden, who appointed LeDuff and who also is black, lauded his chief's stewardship of the department during the crisis.

The New York Times has a fascinating story on the big differences between the people who fled to Atlanta versus those who were evacuated to Houston. The NYT headlines the story, "Storm's Escape Routes: One Forced, One Chosen":

(T)he divergent experiences of those who went to Houston and those who went to Atlanta suggest that recovery depends on more than individual resources and demographics. Just as important are less quantifiable factors: a sense of welcome and connection, the presence of friends and family, even how narrowly they survived the disaster.

I'll be blogging more on Katrina as the week goes on. The anniversary is Tuesday, Aug. 29.

Cool Headline of the Day

I love the whimsy of this headline on a science article yesterday in the Los Angeles Times:

Round and Orbity? Must Be a Planet.

Id est (Mating)

Did you know that the common abbreviation "i.e." stands for "id est"? And that's Latin for "that is"? I guess I knew this already, but I was reminded recently by the novel Mating by Norman Rush. This was a book group pick (not mine). It is set in Botswana, and it's about an anthropology graduate student who decided to romantically pursue another academic, a man who has started a women-only commune sort of development in rural Africa. The novel is supposed to be a "comedy of manners." But it struck me as kind of being an object of amusement. The narrator keeps saying "id est" instead of i.e. Guess what? That's annoying!
On the other hand ... I was looking around for reviews of Mating, and I found this totally amusing blog post. This blogger loved "Mating," and what she has to say about it is pretty interesting:

A couple of people I recommended this book to were extremely annoyed by the writing-voice ... . I, however, LOVE the voice: cerebral, obsessively psychological, yearning, illogical -- It comes from right out of me. I relate.

Read her whole post here.

Cooking for Mr. Latte

I've been re-reading Cooking for Mr. Latte this week and really savoring it. It's so charming, so fun, I think it should be counted among the great food memoirs of our time. Or at least I think it should because it's youthful, exhuberant, romantic and (mostly) unpretentious.
The book drew on the first-person columns Ms. Hesser wrote about her courtship with the man who became her husband, Tad Friend, aka Mr. Latte. During this time she was also a food writer for The New York Times, so there's lots of talk about cooking and restaurants. Each episode ends with related recipes. Though I haven't made many of the recipes because they tend to involve exotic ingredients, i.e. goat's milk yogurt, etc.
I miss the author of Cooking for Mr. Latte ... Amanda Hesser doesn't seem to write much in the first person anymore, though she does still write about food for the NYT Magazine. In fact, I think she is the food editor for the NYT Mag now.
I have to conclude that I just like first-person food writing. Taste, literally, is such a personal thing. It makes sense to write about it in a personalized way. For instance, I just love Frank Bruni's blog, and he write mostly in the first person. He had a recent story about eating his way across Fast Food America that was just a hoot.

Important reporting on the environment

This week, the Los Angeles Times launched a major investigative series called Altered Oceans. It looks at the way humans are changing much of the ocean ecology through things like fertilizer run-off and garbage. These extremely disturbing stories paint a picture of environmental change on an almost primordial level.
This is not a terribly original thought, but I'll post it here anyway: My fear is not for the earth. In the long run, the earth will be fine. My fear is we'll change the climate so much that humans won't be able to survive.

No "Search Inside" - bleh! (Kafka on the Shore)

Ugh, it's sad how dependent I've become on Amazon's "Search Inside This Book" function. I use it all the time to grab quotes from books I want to write about in my blog, or just to look up passages I want to remember. And now it's failing me. There is no search inside function for Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.
This novel was so different, so strange -- almost dada-esque -- but extremely touching and filled with compassion. The narrator, a Japanese teenager named Kafka, is running away from home to avoid an Oedipal prophecy. Meanwhile, Mr. Nakata, a retarded man injured in a mysterious incident during World War II, has the ability to talk with cats. Johnny Walker (yep, the man on the liquor bottle) is a malevolent manifestation who wants to create a magic flute that will let him take over the world. Then there is the transgendered hemophiliac who runs an elegant private library. All that, and it's fun to read.
The quote I was looking for said something like this: We come closest to truth through metaphor.
I'm going to have to re-read the book now. Lucky me!
UPDATE: I just remembered my other favorite quote from KotS: The present moment is the past devouring the future.

Which Dostoevsky novel should I read first?

I've never read a Dostoyevsky novel. (I have read some of his short stories.) Which one should I start with?
The most likely suspects are Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov

Hard News by Seth Mnookin

I finally picked up Hard News by Seth Mnookin off my bookshelf, and really was fascinated by his re-telling of the Jayson Blair fiasco at The New York Times. Because I work in journalism, I followed the story very closely as it was happening back in 2003, when Blair got busted for fabricating news stories for the NYT. In fact, I followed the story so closely that I thought, "There is no way Mnookin is going to be able to tell me more than I've already read about this."
Well, I was wrong. Maybe it's that time has gone by and I've forgotten details. But more likely is that Mnookin was able to distance himself from the whole mess and then write a compelling narrative of a Newspaper Gone Wrong.
I was also fascinated by Mnookin's exhaustive sourcing. He often gives credit within the text when he refers to others's reportage. Copious end notes further explain what he got from his own interviews and what came from other sources. The book's index is excellent as well. (A rant for another day: the horror of substandard indexes.) Finally, in the paperback edition I have, he lists corrections to the hardback edition. I don't think I've ever seen that; it smacks of accountability and accuracy.
I suppose some of this was a defensive necessity given the subject matter. Most of his sources are reporters and editors from the nation's preeminent newspaper. I imagine they would eat you for lunch or at least trash your reputation for all eternity if you got things wrong. But wow, it's nice for a reader like me to be able to examine the sourcing to that degree.

LibraryThing

As you can see (I hope), I've added a widget from LibraryThing to the side of this blog so you can see random books from my library.
We'll see how this thing works ... Consider it an experimental addition for the moment.
You can view the books I own at LibraryThing via this link.
What is LibraryThing?
In librarian-speak, it's cataloging software for small, private collections.
In plain English, it's a Web site where you can make a list of all the books you own.
Cool, eh?

Persuasion

I read Jane Austen's Persuasion this weekend, and I was disappointed. It did not seem nearly as sophisticated or appealling as Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice.
I suppose it's silly to expect to enjoy her less notable works as much as the more famous works. But still ...
The heroine Anne Elliot in particular struck me as -- I'm sorry, but there's no other word for it -- a ninny.
She was so passive. She didn't do anything to make Captain Wentworth pursue her. If he hadn't decided he still liked her, there would have been no story at all.
I know those are fighting words. So come on, Janeites, let's take off the gloves and throw down.

Novelization

Everybody expects books to be made into movies, but what about movies turned into books? They're called novelizations, and Slate has a fascinating article on this genre, which seems to be sadly in decline:

Disappointed by the new movie Superman Returns? Why not read the novel? For more than 70 years, movies have been turned into novelizations, and these books are how many of us relived the excitement of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or first encountered such off-limits fare as the R-rated Alien. Novelizations are evolutionary throwbacks to the romantic days of the pulps: two-fisted tales, banged out on a deadline by writers with strong chops and bags full of tricks. In 2006, however, they are a besieged breed. They have always been written under trying circumstances: After signing a heavy-duty nondisclosure agreement, the author is handed a copy of the screenplay, which may bear little resemblance to the movie that is actually being shot. He or she is put on a tight deadline, sometimes as short as two weeks. The result is a cheap paperback that bookstores consider sellable for the month around the movie's release.

Read the whole article here.
When I was a youngster, my sister and I were crazy about the novelizations for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, both by Vonda N. McIntyre. We loved the backstory on Lt. Saavik, a small supporting character in the movies. In the books, this half-Vulcan, half-Romulan Star Fleet officer has a love affair with Capt. Kirk's long-lost son, a fascinating subplot that never appeared in the movie. Hooray for novelizations!

Microserfs

Earlier this week, Bill Gates announced his intention to leave his job at Microsoft to devote his time to philanthropy.
The news reminded me of one of my favorite novels, Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. Bill Gates is an important but unseen character. The book is about a group of low-level programmers who leave Microsoft to start their own software company. Daniel, one of the programmers, narrates the book through his diary entries. He and his friends are trying to balance their obsessive work with a desire to have fulfilling personal lives. But they're all driven to be part of the excitement of pioneering a one-point-oh piece of software, and that takes up a lot of time.
Here's how the novel begins:

Friday

This morning, just after 11:00, Michael locked himself in his office and he won't come out.

Bill (Bill!) sent Michael this totally wicked flame-mail from hell on the e-mail system - and he just wailed on a chunk of code Michael had written. Using the Bloom County-cartoons-taped-on-the-door index, Michael is certainly the most sensitive coder in Building Seven - not the type to take criticism easily. Exactly why Bill would choose Michael of all people to wail on is confusing. We figured it must have been a random quality check to keep the troops in line. Bill's so smart.

Bill is wise.
Bill is kind.
Bill is benevolent.
Bill, Be My Friend...Please!

Actually, nobody on our floor has ever been flamed by Bill personally. The episode was tinged with glamour and we were somewhat jealous. I tried to tell Michael this, but he was crushed.

Read the rest of the excerpt published in Wired magazine here.

The Observations

I reviewed The Observations by Jane Harris for the newspaper where I work. It begins:

The charming voice of Irish maid Bessy Buckley brightens this contemporary take on the intrigues of scheming servants, arrogant masters and nosy townspeople orbiting the gloomy Scottish estate of Castle Haivers. Bessy gets her position there after unwittingly revealing to her soon-to-be mistress, Arabella Reid, that she can read and write.

Read the entire review here.

Happy Bloomsday!

Today is Bloomsday! Remember last year when I blogged about Bloomsday? No? Well read that entry here.
I'm happy to report that my Ulysses book group, whittled down to a lean, mean, group of three, finished about 70 percent of the book. We drove an hour south today to have lunch with the James Joyce Society of Sarasota.
We ate, then watched actors read a scene from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Then there was a scene that imagined Joyce having a conversation with one of his contemporaries. Then there was a trivia quiz.
It was fairly modest affair, J. said it was smaller than it had been in years past. But we still had a lot of fun and enjoyed our lit-geeky selves.
We are going to finish Ulysses then try to read Proust. I'll have to research to see if there is a date associated with Proust for us to celebrate. Somehow I doubt it.
And on a final note, The New Yorker this week published an article about the great lengths James Joyce's grandson has gone to to protect his copyright. Read it here, quick, before it disappears into their archive. The grandson seems a bit intense, but in a way that strikes me as very Irish, at least as it's portrayed in Ulysses. Read the article and decide for yourself.

Special Libraries Association in Baltimore

I got back this week from the Special Libraries Association annual conference in Baltimore. I got to hang out with lots of other news librarians. One of the keynote speakers was Gwen Ifill of Washington Week.
I blogged about my experience for the News Division blog, check it out here.
It's important to note that special librarians includes just about any librarian who does not work at a public library, a school or a university. I think it would be more appropriate to call us specialized librarians, but that's not the traditional term. At the conference, I met all kinds of different librarians, including law librarians, corporate librarians, freelance researchers, scientific librarians, etc. It's a very diverse group.

Favorite books, Men vs. Women

A friend who knows I'm fascinated by book lists sent me this item. A British study separated the genders and then asked for their favorite books. Women's No. 1 book is Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Men's No. 1 book is Albert Camus's The Outsider, or as we know it in the U.S., The Stranger.
Making both Top 20 lists are Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, Gabriel Garcia 's One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
I tend to think that men and women have more similarities than differences, but I still find this list kind of fun. The article characterizes the differences as men preferring angst, women preferring passion.
I'm also thrilled and amused to see that Nick Hornby's wonderful novel High Fidelity cracked the men's list at No. 15, coming in right ahead of James Joyce's Ulysses.
Read the whole list here.
Thanks to Ryan F. for the tip!