Favorite books from 2018
I read 54 books this year (3 of them were repeats including Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire). 9 of them were audio books (go Audible) and 10 were actual tree-books (largely thanks to some older books that are out-of-print hand-me-downs from friends that haven’t yet been digitized).
Going through my full list there were, as usual, a lot of “practical” books this year … in the past that had meant a lot of business, programming, sales, and psychology books. This year that meant more books on farming, livestock, homesteading (I’ve left these off this list but email me for reccs!), and of course, flying. :)
Now straight to the list, organized by category this time:
“Business”
The Power of Moments - Chip & Dan Heath. Recommended by one of my college professors, Tina Seelig, when I happened to bump into her at the mall! One of the few pop-psychology books I read this year, but totally worth it. The fundamental argument is that you can create outsize returns by focusing on specific, high-value moments (for customers, employees, children, whatever). Specifically to create a moment they focus on four things:
- Elevation - make it stand out. Formal attire, pomp & circumstance, whatever … but demarcate it as memorable
- Insight - deliver some “ah hah”
- Pride - inspire pride amongst the people there. “We” are part of something, or accomplished something
- Connection - build community
The lack of attention paid to an employee’s first day is mind-boggling. What a wasted opportunity to make a new team member feel included and appreciated. Imagine if you treated a first date like a new employee: “I’ve got some meetings stacked up right now, so why don’t you get settled in the passenger seat of the car and I’ll swing back in a few hours?” To avoid this kind of oversight, we must understand when special moments are needed. We must learn to think in moments
Flying
Flight of Passage - Rinker Buck. Recommended by a pilot (and college) friend, Tiffany Chao. Wonderful “growing up” story of two brothers in the 1960s who restore their own vintage airplane and fly across the country (New York-ish to LA-ish) at ages 15 & 17. Well written, heartwarming, and fun, even if you’re not into flying.
“Kern, relax. I’m past it, okay? It could have been me up there, spinning the plane. Everybody’s an asshole once in a while and this just happened to be your day.” “Okay Rink. Thanks. But look, don’t call me an asshole. Yes, I spun my aircraft. But I knew what to do and I recovered. In fact, it was a classic departure stall-spin, a textbook case. And that’s the point, Rink. I was trained for this and I knew exactly what to do. That doesn’t make me an asshole.” “Right. The textbook case. Sorry. I promise. I’ll never call you an asshole again.” “Thanks. Now look, don’t tell Daddy about this, all right?” “Ah Christ Kern. Why would I tell Daddy? I said you’re an asshole. I’m not an asshole.” “Jeez . . . Rink, Jeez . . . Okay. But just for the record?” “Yeah. For the record.” “Champs suck.”
All of this was a revelation for Macky. It had never occurred to her that, while doping a plane, you get high on the dope. Sanding was boring, back-breaking work. The dust curling up from the fabric coated our noses and throats and our arms and shoulders ached after an hour. But fortified with butyrate, we could hardly tell we were working. Besides, the warm weather had arrived, Macky and I had ferocious cases of spring fever, and we just wanted to goof off out there and get high. As soon as we got into the shop every night we were clamoring for Kern to start up the compressor and give us our first dose. “Hey Kern!” I called out. “Give us a hit.” “Ah c’mon Rink,” Kern said. “This is an aircraft recovering project. You don’t try to get high. It’s supposed to just happen by mistake.” “Screw that, Kern,” I said. “Give us a hit or we don’t sand.”
Ah, what about radios? You’re going all the way to the coast. I bet you put in something real nice.” “It’s the standard Cub, Hank,” Kern said. “No radio.” “No radio! Hey, who’s got radios? I ferried a 450-Stearman all the way to Panhandle, Texas, last year. No radio.” Kern spread his hands wide and lifted them toward his shoulders, palms up. “You don’t need it!” “Exactly! You don’t need it!” Hank said. “Fuck ’em. All these guys flying around in Bonanzas and shit. They’re such hot stuff because they got a panel full of radios. And then, you know, they crash, and the FAA inspectors come. Everybody’s standing ’round the wreck scratching their heads. How’d they crash with all them radios in the panel? Nobody gets it. You don’t need radios.”
But I wasn’t completely sentimental about it. As we followed the twisting, muddy oxbows of the Wabash into southern Illinois, I checked the notebook I was keeping on our fuel and living expenses. Despite consuming almost $20 worth of food and fuel in Indiana, there was only one entry for the entire state—$4.02 for dinner in East Richmond last night. And we’d pulled a fast one on that dumbass gas jockey too. The Star reporter picked up our breakfast tab, so we just pocketed the $5 the gas jockey had given us and never told him about it. Crossing Indiana, we’d made a profit of 98 cents. These Hoosiers were outstanding. All you had to do in Indiana was land somewhere and spoon-feed everybody a bunch of bullshit about flying coast to coast, and then they actually paid you to cross their state.
Guadalupe. Before that day I always thought of Exupéry and Ernest Gann, and the early airmail pilots who flew the pass, as distant, heroic figures, brave men who conquered peaks. They seemed very aloof to me and I could never emulate them. Now I felt closer to them all, and I had learned something else. It wasn’t bravery. Bravery isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. They were just stubborn, that’s all, and afterward they were very tired.
Fate is the Hunter - Ernest Gann. A Christmas gift from Ashley Sullivan. Another flying memoir, this time from a little earlier (1930s to the 1950s), maybe a little more fanciful (but I’m not sure). The start was a little slow, leading me to take a while to finish it (I started it a year or two ago), but after another endorsement from a friend I got through the first chapter or two and really started to enjoy it. Some great stories and great writing.
Engines - Mike Busch. A great gift from Dennis Pilarinos. This one is super practical (the writing is fine too, but nothing to write home about). Mike was a software developer who, as I understand it, also loved to fly, and decided to become an aviation mechanic in his retirement … after which he started asking a lot of very reasonable questions about “why do we do it that way?” This led him to get really into the research of how and why things work (or don’t), and start uncovering a lot of counter-intuitive concepts. My personal favorite is his research on MIFs (”maintenance induced failure”, where something in an airplane is torn apart and inspected “just to be safe” … which in some cases turns out to increase the failure rate because a mistake is more common in reassembly than it was in everyday usage). And he goes into a ton of fascinating detail on all the ins and outs of the powerplants that pull us around the sky…where I find more understanding to be a useful pursuit.
Severe Weather Flying - Dennis Newton. One of my primary flight instructors, Patti Andrews, had this book and was purging her library and gave it to me … turns out to be probably the best book on weather I’ve ever read. It starts with a reasonable and understandable explanation of the macro-physics of weather and the whys, and actually dives into useful techniques for forecasting and avoiding, while not going so far into minutiae as to make it unreadable.
“Adventure”
Shadow Divers - Robert Kurson. Recommended by Sean Beausoleil, and it certainly lived up to his recommendation. A story about a group of deep-water shipwreck divers who discover a heretofore-unknown wreck off the east coast and try to figure out what it is (hint: it was a WW2 combatant vessel). Because they’re diving in the days before things like Heliox & Trimix are widely accepted, they’re down below 200′ on standard air mixes and fighting all kinds of crazy things like nitrogen narcosis … as if diving in a wreck alone wasn’t scary enough. Quick read and very much worth it for a good (true) adventure story with fascinating characters. Related (and will likely make my 2019 list), I just finished listening to LINK Rocket Men, by the same author, and it was also fantastic.
Not all divers succumb to panic as Drozd did. A great diver learns to stand down his emotions. At the moment he becomes lost or blinded or tangled or trapped, that instant when millions of years of evolution demand fight or flight and narcosis carves order from his brain, he dials down his fear and contracts into the moment until his breathing slows and his narcosis lightens and his reason returns. In this way he overcomes his humanness and becomes something else. In this way, liberated from instincts, he becomes a freak of nature.
Richie’s father was right: always swing while the other guy is telling you how he’s going to kick your ass.
They warned him—relentlessly—about the “snowball effect,” the process whereby a diver ignores a minor problem or two only to encounter other problems that combine with the earlier ones to doom him. “Always answer the first problem immediately and fully,” they said, “or you’re fucking dead.”
Most men, it seemed to them, went through life never really knowing themselves. A man might consider himself noble or brave or just, they believed, but until he was truly tested it would always be mere opinion.
Kiss Or Kill - Mark Twight. I can’t remember who recommended this to me, and I actually read it years ago but came back to it this year. A fascinating climbing book about one of the early pioneers of alpine-style mountaineering (instead of the classic “siege style” of massive base camps and ferrying loads, with many trips up & down to acclimate), where they just make a sprint to the summit and back down before the body necessarily needs to acclimate fully. High reward, but high risk … and Mark seems to have a death wish, but somehow has continued on. His writing is really raw and you get into his head, which can be equal parts fascinating and disturbing…you’ll either love it or hate it.
“You never run out of batteries for that thing do you?” Jeff pointed at my Walkman. It’d be poor style to run out of batteries. Besides, it’s my survival mechanism. When the going gets tough, the tough turn up the volume.
Some people chase pain harder than others, consciously or subconsciously. Some use it to inflate their sense of self-importance. Others test their will by working through it. Each of us has a threshold someplace short of serious harm. Kevin’s different. His definition of pain is more highly evolved than ours. He’s willing to hurt himself permanently to get what he wants.
Every cell must believe the situation serious. If you think you can survive a fall, you will take that fall. If you think you’re going to heaven or will become a bright light illuminating your friends from a parallel universe, you won’t fight hard enough to live through the shit. If you believe dying is an act of fate, you cede control over both your life and your death. You put someone or something else behind the wheel. But if you’re convinced that once you die, it is all over, you’ll fight with every last calorie to keep hold of what you have now. You’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive—alive in the present.
Fools ask why, looking for a sound-byte. OK, I’ll play. I do it because I can. I climb because it hurts, and the pain gives me perspective. It’s difficult, and I can lord my mastery of it over the rest of you. Alpinism is not necessarily about “fun.” It won’t transform every climber into a better person.
“What would you say if I told you we should strip some more gear off the rack, that we can climb this wall with two bivouacs, and that one quart of fuel will be enough? What would you say if I told you we shouldn’t take a tent?”
“Hey fuck-up, instead of measuring those calories, instead of labeling your food bags and organizing all that gear, rather than planning and studying pictures—You Could Have Been Training.”
Tell the truth. First, to yourself. Say it until it hurts. Learn the reality of your own selfishness. Quit living for other people at the expense of your own self, you’re not really alive. You live in the land of denial—and they say the view is pretty as long as you remain asleep. Well it’s time to WAKE THE FUCK UP! So do it. Wake up. When you drink the coffee tomorrow, take it black and notice it. Feel the caffeine surge through you. Don’t take it for granted. Use it for something.
Back yourself up against a wall. Have an opinion one way or the other, get off the fence and rip it up. Cut yourself off so there is no going back. Once you’re committed the truth will come out. You ask about security? What you need is uncertainty. What you need is confusion. Something which forces you to reinvent yourself, a whip to drive you harder.
Left of Boom - Doug Raux. Recommended in an article about Patrick Skinner, an ex-CIA officer turned local policeman in Georgia (go read the article, I’ll wait). Aside from the interesting title (being a reference to the timeline of an explosion, eg left is before … stay left of the boom), the book is full of 20-something bravado but also (I thought) a few insightful observations about the early US involvement in Afghanistan. This was my equivalent of a trashy romance novel, though…
We had a ton in Kabul, where they weren’t needed. And, because of the dangerous nature of the forward bases, the officers that we did have there served for only a year. This gave birth to a saying that was painfully on point: “We haven’t been in Afghanistan for ten years. We’ve been in Afghanistan one year, ten times.”
General Stanley McChrystal, who was the commander of US and ISAF forces in Afghanistan when I arrived, had a sign hanging above his doorframe that read “17-5-2.” Meaning seventeen hours for work, five hours for sleep, and two hours for PT and eating. As a small unit entirely self-sufficient and reliant upon one another for everything, we lived and breathed this motto at Wadi Base.
The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision. —MAIMONIDES
When the driver arrived I instructed him to take me to Georgetown Hospital. The doctors there informed me that I had survived a mild heart attack and had developed a condition called “alcoholic cardiomyopathy,” which meant the toxins from the alcohol had weakened my heart muscle to the point where it was no longer pumping blood efficiently. The only cure was to lay off the booze. At twenty-nine years old. Nice
It’s when the “international community” expresses “concern” about your “situation” that your situation is well and truly fucked. —MICHAEL D. WEISS
Among the Thugs - Bill Buford. Recommended by Chris Andrew. Fascinating look inside “the Firm” of the late 1980s in the UK and the rise of football hooliganism … a cross between accidentally hilarious adventures and serious ethnography that is as disturbing as it is curious.
T-shirt—“I don’t have a drinking problem unless I can’t find a drink”
Tourist trash is conspicuous when it travels. But football supporters are different; they’re worse. Much, much worse.
the crowd, having surrounded the tank, found itself unable to commit the next act—an unequivocally criminal one, antisocial, lawless—and then one man, the man with the mustache, scaled the tank. He was not a leader, or at least not a leader in the sense that we believe crowds to be governed by leaders. He was not there to cajole, persuade, exhort, enjoin, hypnotize, or rouse, and it is unlikely that the crowd would have responded to him if he had tried. Although he will be seen by the authorities as responsible—he is there, after all, in view—he has no influence over the crowd. He is merely the first to cross an important boundary of behavior, a tacit boundary that, recognized by everyone there, separates one kind of conduct from another. He is prepared to commit this “threshold” act—an act which, created by the crowd, would have been impossible without the crowd, even though the crowd itself is not prepared to follow: yet.
English, the great mapping language of imperialism, has no verb which is the antithesis of to civilize, no word to describe the act of un-making the rules that citizens have made. Our lives do not admit the prospect, are organized to exclude it.
I was surprised by what I found; moreover, because I came away with a knowledge I had not possessed before, I was also grateful, and surprised by that as well. I had not expected the violence to be so pleasurable. I would have assumed, if I had thought to think about it, that the violence would be exciting—in the way that a traffic accident is exciting—but the pure elemental pleasure was of an intensity that was unlike anything I had foreseen or experienced before. But it was not just any violence. It wasn’t random violence or Saturday night violence or fights in the pub; it was crowd violence—that was what mattered: the very particular workings of the violence of numbers.
Current Events
Fear - Bob Woodward. Recommended by Mark Gainey. This book was largely sad (thanks, Mark :p ) but felt pretty relevant to current events, and Woodward as always delivered a maximally-insightful-for-minimal-pain story. And at least some of the stories were funny … even if I wasn’t often sure whether to laugh or metaphorically cry.
Fiction
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres. This is my fiancee Elizabeth’s favorite book, so felt as if that was less recommended and more required. ;) But I actually quite enjoyed it … for as little fiction as I read, it felt way more interesting and gripping than the normal throw-away Tom Clancy-type novels I read, and actually managed to make me happy / sad / impatient / etc in concert with the fates of the characters. I can’t say that it will become my favorite book, but it was really nice to read it and enjoy it.
The most intriguing thing about the angel was that when it wanted to speak to God or one of the saints, it fiddled about with the metal box and made lots of interesting whines and hisses and crackles. And then God would speak back in angel-speech, sounding so far away and stilted that Alekos realised for the first time how difficult it was for God to get himself heard by anyone. He began to recognise words that were repeated often, like ‘Charlie’ and ‘Bravo’, and ‘Wilco’, and ‘Roger’. Another odd thing about the creature was that it carried a pistol, a light automatic, and a number of very heavy khaki-coloured iron pine cones with metal levers that he was not allowed to touch. All the angels he had ever seen in pictures carried swords or spears, and it seemed odd that God had seen fit to modernise.
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.
Alexi, now completely bald and having travelled from the ideological arctic of the puritanical Communist party into the sub-tropical clime of the Socialist party, discovered with some initial anxiety and guilt that his success as a lawyer had indiscernibly precipitated him into the very class that he had professed to despise. He was a sleek bourgeois with a big Citroën, a purportedly earthquake-proof house complete with terracotta pots bursting with geraniums, four suits, and a loathing of the corruption and incompetence embodied by the party of his heart. He spoke volubly in favour of the socialists at meetings and parties, but in the ballot box he furtively marked his cross against Karamanlis, and then affected terrible despair when the latter won the vote. He hired an accountant and became as efficient in evading taxes as any other conscientious Greek with a long tradition to uphold.
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