For the last few years, I’ve not only kept a daily journal, but on one of the last pages of that journal I’ve kept a list of the books I’ve read. In 2008, that list spilled over onto a second page. I’m a fast writer, but a slow reader. Nonetheless, in 2008 I read 40 books, and to my surprise, only a baker’s dozen of them were on automotive subjects:
Of Firebirds and Moonmen
Hard Driving
For Gold & Glory
Route 66 Encyclopedia
Eight Women, Two Model Ts, and the American West
Autophobia
Traffic
Mickey Thompson
The Harley Davidson Archive Collection
Getting There
Survivor: The Unrestored Collector Car
You Are What You Drive
Republic of Drivers
Reviews of all but Firebirds and Getting There can be found under Book Reviews on the iZoom home page.
Of Firebirds had been published in 2007 and thus wasn’t subject to a formal review, but was recommended to me by a retired automotive designer. The book is the first-hand account of “a designer’s story from the Golden Age” by Norm James, who helped design Motorama concepts and production vehicles for General Motors and later worked on concepts for the moon rover.
Getting There dates to the mid-‘90s and details with enlightening perspective the battle between roads and rail for domination of American transportation in the first half of the 20th Century. The book also has things to say about government involvement in ordaining transport winners and losers that apply to what’s happening today with the auto industry and fuel sources.
Except for Hard Driving, For Gold & Glory and Republic of Drivers, I’ll let my reviews speak for themselves. I’ll come back to those three a little later in this blog.
So what did the auto writer read that was unrelated to automobiles? These, presented in chronological order:
The Whale and the Supercomputer
The Geographer’s Library
A Handbook for Elders
The Elephant and the Dragon
Uncivilized Beasts and Shameless Hellions
Anton Woodie: The Boy Murderer
America 1908
Brook Trout and the Writing Life
The Clouded Leopard
So You Want to Be President?
Where God Was Born
Boone, a Biography
Life: It is all about God
The Thief at the End of the World
Behind the Mask
The Next Rodeo
Leading with a Limp
Someone Knows My Name
The Architecture of Happiness
Sweetsmoke
A Land So Strange
Here If You Need Me
Globalization
How the States Got Their Shapes
The Card
American Lion
A Voyage Long and Strange
Only The Geographer’s Library, Someone Knows My Name and Sweetsmoke were works of fiction, but there was a lot of serious historical research that went into the fictional characters we meet in Someone Knows My Name, an account of an African girl swept up into slavery. Sweetsmoke also is an account of slavery in the United States. Meanwhile, among the automotive titles above, Hard Driving is the biography of NASCAR’s first African-American driver, For Gold & Glory tells the story of African-Americans whose goal was racing at Indianapolis, and a chapter in Republic of Drivers deals with challenges faced by African-Americans on public highways.
I didn’t plan to read so much about that subject during the year in which we elected our first African-American president, but it certainly enhanced the experience.
Among the non-automotive titles, I’d most strongly recommend Somebody Knows My Name, Leading with a Limp, Here If You Need Me, The Next Rodeo, Where God Was Born, and A Voyage Long and Strange. Those last two were written, respectively, by Bruce Feiler and Tony Horwitz, authors with multiple titles on my personal book shelves. Meanwhile, I’d be eager to read whatever Somebody author Lawrence Hill writes next. As a memoir, Here may be all Kate Braestrup ever needs to write. Last Rodeo was my introduction to William Kittredge, a prolific writer I hope to encounter again. Meanwhile, Dan Allender’s Limp will change your outlook if not your life.
So what’s on the horizon for one reader’s reading list for 2009? Well, I’m fascinated as I read The Wisdom of Crowds and, I guess in anticipation of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday in February, I’m halfway through The Last Lincolns: The Rise & Fall of a Great American Family.
Then, waiting on my “to read” shelf, are William Least Heat-Moon’s latest American adventure; a new book about the mysterious details surrounding the sinking of the USS Edsall, a Naval destroyer; And You Know You Should Be Glad: A True Story of Lifelong Friendship written by one of my college classmates, and I hope to finally get around to reading Open Road, which my friend Phil Patton wrote 23 years ago.
So now that you’ve seen what I’ve been and will be reading, I’m curious to hear what you’re reading, and please include automotive and non-automotive titles and why they interest you. (Just click on the “comments” line below to share your reading list.)
-- Larry Edsall