Category: Books

This is an ambitious endeavor, covering fermentation in all its forms, all over the world.

After getting into sourdough baking, I developed a preference for “scientific” cookbooks, using weight measurements (metric) with page layouts that are clearly formatted for ease of visual discrimination as one skims the the work. However, all these books invariably ended up being messy and touchy feely when describing how to develop a starter.

Fermentation is the art of a collecting things, shoving them into a favorable environment, and letting time do its thing.

As modern humans, we are given an illusion of control. However, choosing to ferment is a leap of faith, especially at the idiosyncratic home-brew level and especially in one’s first attempts.

But one should start simply, with the a basic sauerkraut. The first batch I made was with some almost-wilted purple cabbage that had been abandoned in the fridge. I chopped it up, squeezed the leaves as I added salt, shoved it all into a jar. A couple days later I had the best sauerkraut I’ve ever tasted in my life.

Absolute magic.

My sourdough starter is also magical, but it took two long weeks of feeding and discarding before she came to life. It then took another three weeks before I figured out how to bake properly to draw out her full capabilities.

In contrast, sauerkraut was so simple. Just two ingredients shoved into a jar for a couple days. Fermentation happens, and this book is a lovely mix of folksy wisdom, extensive experience, and authoritative research that wrestles with this unruly topic.

This book is an encyclopedic and magisterial work. I wonder what it’s like to work on such a project. Writing is a lonely task and any ambitious project is fraught with insecurity. With this grand title, it’s clear that Sandor Katz knew this was going to be his magnum opus. I also wonder how it feels when such a project achieves the author’s dreams of grandeur, winning a James Beard award and being generally regarded as a in instant classic in the field.

This book is victorious, but whatever brilliance earned from the previous project is fleeting. There’s always the next project. Life (and fermentation) marches on, and I look forward to reading Sandor’s newest book, Fermentation as Metaphor.

Postscript
I really like the following quote, but I couldn’t fit them into the post above.

Professor Kosikowski won over Kindstedt and his fellow graduate students. “He understood that traditional cheesemaking was not simply about food, or even gastronomic delight, but rather carried with it the weight of the culture and local identity that are so essential for providing context and meaning to our lives.” Indeed, all food exists in a broad context, and centralized mass produced food diminishes that context.

page 206

A few months ago I wanted to read some lighter fare, and it doesn’t get much lighter than an interior decoration guide.

However, a style guide that is half a century old has it’s own gravitas.

The anachronistic use of “Mr. and Mrs. John Doe” was a amusing and cringe worthy, and the author seemed overly fond of Marimekko cloth. But it was really quite intriguing to see the true variety of kitchens in this book. Not merely finishes, but substantive differences in arrangements, equipment, and shelving. I strongly suspect that the past five decades of mass standardization made our modern kitchens quite banal.

1970 doesn’t feel that long ago, but frankly, aside from some of the newest kitchens in the book, most of the photos felt completely foreign even though most of them were located in America. Unlike books and magazines today, the photographs were primarily black and white, which wasn’t ideal – except for the modernist kitchens (such as the one in our own house) that didn’t have much color.

Purist kitchens pay no homage to rusticity or prettiness. Uncompromisingly they use twentieth-century units and ingredients. They are inevitably spare of line, extremely well planned and easy to work in. This does not preclude color, but they are often pure white and beautifully detailed. Most purist kitchens are designed by architects – usually for themselves.

page 65

I picked up this book of the side of the road on trash day, and it is regrettable to think of what other books are being tossed out around town without second thought. Even though I wouldn’t have paid money to buy a copy, this book is now safe on my shelves.

I’ve always called myself politically liberal but temperamentally conservative. From his podcasts, I sensed that this brash business school professor had the same sentiments. He railed against the COVID stimulus bills prop up the wealthy while minimizing support to the folks who really need the help, and he never misses an opportunity to hammer our tech giants whenever they are stifling the wider economy.

Given the affinity, I was quite interested in this book but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of handling physical media in a COVID world. After breaking the e-book barrier with BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits, I returned to the Libby app and picked up a copy of the audiobook, narrated by Prof G, himself.

I had been avoiding books on tape because I’ve long felt that books require a certain level of concentration to properly appreciate. However, self help books are the junk food of non-fiction prose. With a run time of less than 4 hours this was barely a nice diversion from my usual slate of podcasts.

I was right.

This book is a nice easy listen. It feels like a compilation of blog articles that muse on the importance of hard work and developing meaningful relationships. It is a fragmented memoir focused on his upbringing, personal success and failings, and the joys of raising his boys. As an exercise in confirmation bias, it was a pleasant exercise to nod along with a nominally self aware, almost-obnoxious, rich, influential, white guy speaking truths I already believed.

The main thing is that I’ve now broken the ebook and audiobook barriers that had limited my intake of this sort non-fiction velvetta. Given everything available in the library catalog, it looks like I’ll be getting all the self help I can handle at 1.5x speed.

Atomic Habits is a survey of the best knowledge of habits; worthy of being perennially on hold at the library as an update to Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit. I remember listening to Duhigg’s book a few years ago and feeling quite inspired about habits. Then nothing happened.

Unfortunately, both of these books are great at motivating one to pick up good habits, but neither is great at giving you concrete steps to get there.  

As alternative, I suggest BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits. Fogg has developed simple crystalline ideas (such as his B=MAP model) and paired it with his powerful Focus Mapping exercise. The power in Fogg’s book is rooted in his career long focus on behavior change. He is a primary source who is able to provide actionable advice from the first chapter onward – for personal, family, and business use. When he says the majority of popular literature on habit formation is incorrect, I trust him.  

Even though the publication dates are reversed, I would say that Fogg is the teacher, while Clear is the student. This is not intended to be an insult. While the master has myopically focused on the craft, the student is free to explore interlocking connections within the field. It was useful to read Atomic Habits as a refresher a few weeks after completing Tiny Habits. Getting a different author’s holistic perspective on the subject was a nice jolt to keep pursuing the practice.

I’m not saying the two books are in perfect alignment. For example,  Atomic Habits proposes a path of Identity > Behavior > Outcomes (similar to Sinek’s Start with Why).  Even though this “concentric ring” model isn’t directly addressed by in Tiny Habits, I think BJ Fogg would propose that one should start by modifying Behavior, which will then influence your Identity and Outcomes (Identity < Behavior > Outcomes).

However, the differences are minor, and they complement each other well. For example, I’m using both approaches to help me lose weight. I created a new food intake checklist that helps me track what I eat (a tiny habit at every meal), as well as regularly repeating a mantra “I enjoy hunger” to adjust my identity from someone used to rely on snacks all day.

Both are worth reading. Maybe you’ll prefer Atomic Habits. However, since action are more significant than words, I should note that I purchased a my own hardcopy of Tiny Habits, while I am content to merely compliment Atomic Habits.

Invisible Cities and Labyrinths have been close at hand ever since my Berkeley days, including a couple trips to China. But the dirty secret is that I’ve never completely read either book. I hadn’t gotten around to the non-fiction essays of Labyrinths, and my attempted read of Invisible Cities was waylaid by the deep sleep deprivation of studio. As a privileged knowledge worker comfortably hunkering down during the pandemic, I was fortunate to rectify both omissions over the past year.

I’m happy I did. I suspect the book endures as a classic because it is a lovely collection of prose poems that is perfectly suited for random sampling. Which is a fine practice, but such a habit misses the structure of this book.

The algorithm is nominally obvious from looking at the table of contents. Then again, reading a book by the TOC is knowing a City via its subway map. Calvino starts in Marco and Kublai’s dream world, slowly introduces anachronisms, bringing the reader into the present day (now delightfully patinaed from the vantage point of the 21st century), toys with darker themes, and leaves on a wistful note.

The flow is as rich as the individual pieces. The book is carefully ordered arrangement, and the reader is well served going covered to cover. My copy still sits next to the bed; unlike many of its compatriots who quickly return to the shelves, this one ain’t going nowhere.

I’ve written fondly about wisdom literature, however I’m not fond of books that just focus on the idea of “wisdom”.

These two books are more poetic than the Wisdom of Solomon, but all three are thin paeans to the concept of wisdom.

The Chinese books sell wisdom for the sake of a well ordered empire and emphasize balance and relationships.

This sales pitch is more appetizing than Solomon’s heavy handed appeal to a monotheistic god presenting naive choices between right and wrong.

But it’s all thin gruel.

Gotcha.

Wisdom good.

Where do go from here?

䷾䷛

Even so, a book that has survived the test of time to enter the canon of a great empire is most likely worth a download and quick read. Maybe you’ll catch something I missed.

In 2020, I started a system for my personal reading. I took five books to become my current reading list, put them next to the bed, and stashed the rest out sight.

Each of the five books satisfied a category:

1. Non-Fiction
2. Fiction
3. Spirituality
4. Self Help
5. Art

When I wrote the first draft of this post, the books on deck were:

• Mythologies, Roland Barthes
• Farewell My Lovely, Raymond Chandler
• Collected Writings of Epicurus
• Zen of Seeing by Fredrick Franck
• Jazz, Henri Matisse

The only book I haven’t completed is Epicurus.

In a world where there is so much information, it is important to simplify what is immediately available. Once resolved, you are free to just read within the preselected menu. If I lose interest in a book, I can either throw it off out of the favored circle (as I did with Epicurus) which frees you up to read other books within the category (I’ve read quite a few wisdom texts over the past couple months. Alternately, I can let a book marinate while I dive into other topics. If so, at least I’m avoiding other books within the same genre, which makes it easier to return to the lagging book.

This system makes it evident if I’ve been heavily pursuing one category over the others. I may or may not counteract against such a trend, but either way, it is good to be clear what is top of one’s mental interests.

This system has turned out to be a well rounded way to wrangle all the good books around me – unread, re-read, library loans, and newly purchased. I’d recommend giving it a shot if your “to read” pile has become intimidatingly tall.

I bought this book so long ago, I checked the copyright to see if I had bought it before leaving California. From the date, it was published a couple years after my wife and I had started dating, so it seems that my memory of buying it in a comic shop in Texas might be accurate.

Last week, I noticed it in the garage on top of my big row of boxed up books, waiting for a permanent home with bookshelves. My daughter saw me flipping through it and wanted to read it.

It was time. I wrapped it up and gave it to her as a birthday present last week.

The girl went so quickly from being a concept, through infancy and toddlerhood, and is now blasting through books and graphic novels with abandon.

It goes fast. Even her prehistory can’t keep up with her.

Last night I had a dream. I led some folks around on a wild foot chase around the neighborhood and then snuck into the office, pretending nothing had happened. To my chagrin, a police officer walked in soon after. Even though I didn’t hurt anyone, someone had slipped and broke their ribs during the run around.

For goodness sake, what’s a more certain sign of aging than having your subconscious punish you for second order effects from your dream-state actions? Maybe its a budding sign of a grown up wisdom?

The book itself is a pretty easy read. It’s a more or less heartwarming collection of stories. Even though your start isn’t as important as it may seem, there are definitely good and bad outcomes at the end.

The main takeaways are to avoid alcohol and smoking, practice good mental acceptance techniques, and create a good network around you. Honestly, this isn’t much different from what everyone tells their kids. Even so, it’s nice to have a few longitudinal studies to lend common sense the authority of science.

Other Takeaways

There were three other key takeaways that I think are worth lifting straight out of the book.

George Valliant identifies six adult life tasks:

1. Identity: Finding a sense of one’s self, values, etc., separate from your parents.
2. Intimacy: Finding a life partner.
3. Career Consolidation: More than a job, this is one’s work.
4. Generativity: Guiding the next generation, community building.
5. Keeper of Meaning: Conservation and preservation of the culture and institution, beyond individuals.
6. Integrity: Facing death and life at the end.

Valliant also lists key “adaptive coping mechanisms” that will help you navigate the vagaries of life. Maladaptive ones are projection, passive aggression, dissociation, acting out and fantasy. There are also mature defenses:

Such virtues include doing as one would be done by (altruism); artistic creation to resolve conflict and spinning straw into gold (sublimation); a stiff upper lip (suppression); and the ability not to take oneself too seriously (humor).

page 64

And finally, Valliant closes his book with a quote from E. B. White, via a valedictory address by Timothy Coggeshall.

Be a true friend.

Do the right thing.

Enjoy the glory of everything.

page 325

I was originally introduced to Borges via his short stories while in college. Twenty years later I finally got around to reading the essays and parables.

Wow. Just as with his stories, these pieces are tight, dense, and well worth reading. Then again, that was pretty obvious – all the adulation that could be written has already been written. Hell, I couldn’t write a collection of hosannas more effusive than the introduction at the start of this anthology.

So let’s talk about the librarian and the Librarian.

One is lionized as a god from South America, the blind protagonist in the rose. And the other is a teacher who makes my daughter excited to live with books. In this time of distance learning in pandemic, where I am an ever present spectator of my girl’s education, I now know why my daughter loves her school librarian.

Ms. Douglas brings the heat. She can control a room even over a video call, with an infectious generous energy every Friday afternoon wrangling first graders for an hour. It is a mundane display of exceptional skill.

As in my profession, there are the great and the Great.

The masters of our universe are revered in legend, but we ought to praise the vast cohort who have quietly mastered their craft, spreading the love to the next generation.