GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Books

  • A Pizza the Size of the Sun, Jack Prelutsky, 1999

    As an audiobook, this was an hour-long collection of silly kid’s songs.

    My ears perked up during the credits. Tony Trischka was the banjo player.

    He’s a legend, even at the time of recording. He wrote the three finger bluegrass instructional book that came with my banjo from the 5th String in Berkeley.

    Wild how one can be among the best in the world, but still end up working in an oddball children’s CD.

    I also wonder what it was like for the Jack Prelutsky. Must be intimidating to be recording on a kazoo with that kind of firepower backing you up.

    ䷘

    No complaints. The girl had fun, and I guffawed a few times. I’d listen to it again, though not by myself.

  • How Will You Measure Your Life?, Clay Christensen, 2012

    A business self help book that is unashamedly both. As a businessman, Christensen starts with incentives and culture.

    He splits incentives into motivation and hygiene factors. Hygiene (fair pay, good team) are the basics that allows you to avoid disliking your job. Motivations are the warm fuzzies that turn your work into a passion.

    He starts with corporate culture to discuss family culture. I generally despise the work = family equivalence, but he frames it well to present a fresh perspective on the matter. I need to ponder how incentive factors affect our family culture.

    Following his thesis from the Innovator’s Dilemma, his key refrain is that the little things beneath our notice are what will determine our future.

    The time and resources that you devote today, at this moment, prove your real priorities. Repeated execution of these priorities create your life.

    His final chapter is a warning to stick to one’s standards. A small compromise in the moment may be a clever marginal play, but the full cost might be realized after one’s course has been steered in an ill direction.

    ䷲

    I listened to it at 1.5x speed. It’s another classic pull yourself up by the bootstraps self help book, this time from a business consultant’s perspective. I haven’t felt the need to listen to it again, but I should watch his TEDx talk.

  • Wisdom of Solomon, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1894

    The Wisdom of Solomon might be a fine devotional for a believer. It’s chock full of paeans to wisdom defined as the faithful adherence to God,

    But there’s nothing else.

    As a former Christian, I view the religion from both the inside and the outside. My parents still practice, but my house is very much non-devout.

    Growing up, Bible stories felt as real as other historical stories. But try explaining Bible stories to someone who wasn’t indoctrinated from birth. Last Christmas, I told the gospel story to my daughter. It was fantastical. I’m certain she’ll have a similar look on her face if I ever recount Greek myths.

    This is my one regret from forsaking religion. I wonder if my kids will miss out on the allusions buried throughout western literature. For that alone, it may be worth an extensive study of the classics, including the Bible — but don’t start here.

    I fully endorse the exclusion of this book from the Protestant canon. I started focused but only skimmed the second half while watching the kids jump on their bed.

    After stumbling across the gem of the Havamal last year, I printed out the wisdom literature in the Apocrypha. After this read, the other books have remained untouched.

  • Taoism: An Essential Guide, Eva Wong, 2011

    Growing up in a Christian home, I didn’t learn about Chinese religions. The one thing I remember is my mom telling me that the Taoists are really crazy.

    When I started dabbling in Eastern philosophy a few years ago, I thought she was talking about the slippery mysticism of the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi.

    My mom was a history major so I wouldn’t be surprised if she was forced to painfully slog through a philosophy class in college. But I also suspect she saw many religious ceremonies growing up in Taiwan.

    The philosophy might be mindblowing, but wait till you check out its practices. This book described a series of practices that run between wild and completely bonkers.

    Admittedly, a Bible story (take something as basic as Christmas) is totally ridiculous for someone who was not raised in the hegemony of Christian myth. So to be fair, all religions are pretty far out.

    But we entered the modern age to get beyond everyone’s superstition. I’m not sold on the intricate cosmology of Christianity, and there’s no reason to adopt the talismans and esoteric exercises on Taoism.

    This book did its job. It gave me enough of an overview to realize that I don’t need to investigate this religion further. Admittedly Taoists are a heterodox bunch so I’m certain there is a more sedate sect that might suit my preferences.

    But time is limited, so I’ll just sample the philosophy, proverbs, and wisdom in all these traditions, and leave the religion to their participants, just as I let my parents worship in peace.

    TLDR: Here is a quick overview of Taoism on youtube…while you’re at it, he also put together a great takedown of Hollywood depictions of Asian “honor”.

  • Upanishads, Vyasa (Vernon Katz, Thomas Egenes, trans.) 2015

    Last year, I listened to the library’s copy of the Upanishads during a 3-hour 10K hike in the hills behind our house.

    It may have been appropriate to experience this work as an audiobook because these were originally oral texts, but it was a slog. Unlike the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads are fourteen separate documents and it was difficult to keep attention without the structure of a story.

    Given their canonical status, it’s my fault for not properly appreciating this experience. Then again, maybe the translator shares some of the blame (I found the introduction to the book incredibly dry).

    Or possibly, these teachings should be sampled one line at a time, slowly pondered in a deliberate fashion.

    The audiobook format is great for lighter works that wash past the consciousness, often at 1.5x speed. Self-help books flitter into the consciousness to create an illusion of learning that will be forgotten in a month.

    The Upanishads are definitely not fluffy self-help fodder. These texts were orally transmitted from father to son. Something that required this much effort must have embodied deep value to survive the attrition of millennia.

    It was too much to digest in an endless stream, even at 1.0x speed.

    In all, I don’t regret the listen. But this was the barest of introductions. If I want to get anything substantive out of the Upanishads, I’ll have to sit down and read it slowly.

    But if the past year of inaction is any indication, I doubt will ever happen.

  • OPM.29 (notes on) The New West, Robert Adams, 1974

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    (notes on) The New West

    The Houston Public Library introduced me to three great books, The New West, Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places, and a third monograph that focused on reflections in the plate glass on New York City streets (but I haven’t been able to rediscover). All three books were from the 1970s and 1980s.

    The New West has kept its freshness ten years after I first discovered it, almost fifty years after publication. Even though the Rocky Mountains are a foreign place for me (the most interaction I’ve had with Denver is stretching my legs at its train station while riding the California Zephyr), the suburban scape is quite familiar.

    The tract homes are much like the simple homes I renovated in the Bay Area. I spent four years remodeling an old tract home in downtown Vegas. I now live next to freshly cleared new subdivisions in the desert. The book’s business strips mirror my grandparent’s avenues in the San Gabriel Valley. I can also see a central business (casino) district from our house, through the dusty haze of flatland. That same highway rolled through the foothills of Austin when I started dating my wife. It also runs through the desert towards Los Angeles.

    It is all so familiar, and yet half a century foreign. Different from what I know, but every element rhymes.

    The only misstep in this book is the introduction to the chapter “Tract and Mobile Homes”.

    Few of the new houses will stand in fifty years; linoleum buckles on countertops, and unseasoned lumber twists walls out of plumb before the first occupants arrive.

    I pulled up a copy of Google maps to verify this sour prediction. There have been some changes. Big trees stand tall where the land was scraped bare and fences now divide the properties. But the homes all remain, sometimes barely touched.

    I wonder if any of the current residents know that their abode is been featured in a photographic monograph? What would they think if they stumble across a print in a fancy gallery? Do they realize the artist fully expected them their homes would quickly disappear?

    However, our ability to predict the future is often half right. I followed up the house search by looking up his busy commercial strips. Almost all of them have changed. Sometimes there are wafts of the past with similar uses in new buildings, but American commerce is one of creative destruction.

    Those examples in this book were not spared. Only the church has remained.

    And so I see our future in Las Vegas. The streets will remain. These squat stucco boxes will survive. I doubt our trees will grow as tall, but I’m curious what our shopping centers will become in the second half of this new century.

    ~

    A Question

    What do you see in your crystal ball? What will stick around in fifty years?

    Hit reply and let’s chat!

    ~

    A Link

    The Growth Equation posted about the importance of physical constraints, especially for knowledge workers who deal in data all day. This is why I love this industry. Outside of academia, architects have to deal with physical reality, even if we aren’t forced to get our hands dirty.

    … and a photo.

    Nisei Grill, San Francisco, 1942, Dorothea Lange

    ~

    Thanks for reading the OPM letter! I’d love to have a conversation if you have any feedback. I hope you found some prompts to stretch your craft as a curious Owner PM. See you soon!

    Justus Pang, RA

  • Old boxes of books

    Once or twice a year, I dig through my fifteen boxes of books in the garage. Aside from the occasional late night web purchase, these are my most materialistic exercises.

    It’s ridiculous that I keep these books.

    The enlightened unattached person should discard all these material goods. Nine years in a box is proof that they are unnecessary.

    However, I love revisiting all these little gifts (burdens?) from my younger self. Books always carry a physical memory of the moment when they were acquired or when they were read.

    Books also carry hope for future knowledge. Mainly a vain hope; I’ve lugged some of these across the continent over two decades, from Berkeley to Houston to Vegas.

    One day, when we find our own house, I envision a big bookshelf with all these books in glorious display. Maybe that’s a vain hope too.

    But for now, I occasionally rescue a select few from the garage. At least those lucky volumes are a step closer to being read.

    Now where can I find time to read?

  • Plates + Dishes, Stephan Schacher, 2005

    Every few months, I rummage through my boxes of books looking for a specific volume. I usually come out with several books to reread, which is what happened last year (even though I didn’t find the book I was searching for).

    This photo book takes a journey through North America, photographing the food and waitresses (all women) along his extended road trip, taken over three separate legs.

    The early 2000s was a tenuous time, having just dealt with the upheaval of 9/11 and the Iraq war. But our lives had not been infected by the smartphone and its ubiquitous internet in the pocket.

    As such, Stephan foretold the incoming future. He just barely beat the trend of uploading sexy photographs of one’s meal and sharing it with the digital world.

    Not that he was searching for sexy. It’s a damn shame to travel 13,000 miles in a big loop around this large continent and just eat diner food. But that’s what he signed up to do.

    Sixteen years after publication, reading the book felt like entering a time capsule. Twice. Both for my initial page turn and slowly reviewing each photograph over the period of a week, reliving communal scenes from my early adulthood.

    As a fan of shoddy diners, the settings are intimately familiar. However, it is strange to think that I am now older than many of the ladies whose portraits are frozen in time. I wonder what they are doing these days. I wonder if they ever ponder what happened to that strange photographer who took a portrait of the meal and of them, almost two decades ago.

    After a while, it felt a bit voyeuristic (especially since the German edition is titled “Cuties and Calories”). Even so, I’ll posit this is a good book. It was definitely a great deal as a deeply discounted remainder item at Half Price Books, even worth moving across the continent for its own road trip from Houston to Las Vegas.

    The book is an interesting concept, a well-executed portrait of our nation. Well worth a read.

  • Burning Chrome, William Gibson, 1986

    The dates are now, the technology is anachronistic, its dystopic urban landscape never materialized, but these short stories still feel real and urgent.

    College was a foreign world before smartphones or wifi, so Gibson’s landscape seemed merely a couple of left turns from being real. Our inner cities had not yet become the playground of the wealthy and the tech in his stories was more advanced than what we had on our desktops.

    Two decades have passed and his dystopia still seems frighteningly close to happening. We have much cooler toys in our pockets, but are we that far away from societal collapse? Even more terrifying is the threat of chaos, we’d now be backsliding into a dark age of decreased technological capacity.

    Progress is not inevitable, and my adulthood has straddled this book portending a future in both directions. Who knows where the future will land? Ultimately, the accuracy of his future-present is irrelevant. Gibson’s genius is in excavating our shared humanity within the heart of these tales.

    The enduring core of these stories is anchored in Gibson’s wistful tone. A more sophisticated reader would find this maudlin tone offputting, maybe too cute by half. Then again, I wasn’t very sophisticated in college when I first read this anthology and I’ve only softened up over time.

  • Another way to slice up my reading

    Last year I created a method to divide my unread books by categories (fiction, non-fiction, spirituality, self-help, art).

    Recently I’ve taken a different approach (most likely because we got an ebook reader, which made the entire world’s library easily accessible).

    I’ve started sorting my to-read list by era:

    • Ancient – Older than 500 years old
    • Almost Modern – 1492 to 1776
    • Modern – 1776-1945
    • Contemporary – 1945 onward.

    When I wrote the first draft, the reading list was:

    • Bhagavad Gita (1000 BCE)
    • Journey to the West (1592)
    • Walden (1854)
    • Oranges (1975), The Tao is Silent (1977), and a couple photography monographs

    I had a sneaking suspicion that something might change, but I thought this loose structure was another good way to create a cross-section through my library.

    Unfortunately, something did change. Since August, I’ve become obsessed (addicted) to an online implementation of the card game Magic the Gathering. Naturally, this has drastically reduced my reading time. I may need to quit that habit so I can go back to my old ways. Maybe an entertainment diet is in order for the new year.