Books I’m Reading

A chuckle-head move

I hardly ever pick up a newspaper, and when I do, I usually spend my time looking at the office supply circulars, but today I read an article. Midway through the article I found this gem:

It was such a chuckle-headed move that no one was sure whether the prosecutors had forgotten teh jduge's ruling or were trying to sneak the testimony through a back door.¹

The article discusses the recent Roger Clemens mistrial, a result of the prosecution doing pretty much exactly what the judge told them not to do. Obviously the case is bigger than the quote, but I really like the term "chuckle-head" and was excited to see it used in the NYT. If you want to read more about the case, read the article, and read this post.

This post will soon be buried in updates with the cases I've been meaning to post, so, if you don't want to read a post on books, office supplies, and other nonsense, you can stop here. It won't hurt my feeling.

Between now and the last time I wrote about what I'm reading, I picked up more books. They are:

That's it for the law books.

I also bought and read the new Erik Larson book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, and like his other books, it did not dissapoint. I know I give horrible book reviews, but they aren't really book review–more like, hey, this is what I'm reading. Before that, I read Extreme Fear, by Jeff Wise. Lately I've been keeping a list–in one of my many notebookls–of the books I want to read. It's a short list, but I think it is a good one:

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown and Hampton Sides
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
My Friend the Mercenary by James Brabazon
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes
SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper by Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin
Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell
Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin

And in the office supply department, I picked up a few Whitelines notebooks. I used to be all about the Rhodia, but now I'm torn.

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1. July 17, 2011. NYT, Sunday Review, "Why are prosecutors striking out," Maureen Dowd. I might fix the cite later.

A brief interlude

The font is going to be different in this post because typepad ate my previous post and if it happened again, something bad would happen.

I managed to post almost of the decisions for the past month. Finally. Now I can write about the things nobody wants to read about. As usual, it will start with what I’ve been reading.

First, I finished Point Made: How to Write Like the Nations’s Top Advocates, by Ross Guberman. I’ve already told a bunch of people to read it. It’s that good. I also read the Garner transcripts, which are a pretty damn amazing resource. Since then I ordered Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing (3rd Edition). Garner recommends the author. I also finished Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger, which was suggested by C&F. Anyone who reads about what I read, knows that if C&F recommends a book, it’s probably a good one. If anyone is looking around for something to read, start there. But I don’t think you will get any suggestions any time soon, as C&F is pretty busy trying to destroy Rakofsky—a seemingly worthwhile endeavor, as most of the internet agrees.

Rakofsky, if you don't know, is suing the internets. I won’t get into the background of it, because, well, it’s all over the place and I don’t want to rehash it here. [1] I just don’t understand the guy.

Imagine you are an attorney, and you walk into a courthouse wearing a clown suit—the full get-up: red nose, big clown hair, funny shoes, etc. So you walk in, manage to get through the metal detectors, and waltz into a courtroom. Everyone turns around and stares. Some laugh. Some just point. Others discuss. Even the judge gets into it. Would you respond by yelling at the people, “how dare you”! After yelling, would you leave the courthouse, light your funny-clown-hair on fire, then walk back into the same room. Once in, after seeing even more people laughing, pointing, etc., would you yell again, but really let them have it this time. Let’s say you did, would you immediately walk out of the courthouse, call the media, and hold a press conference announcing that people shouldn’t be staring, talking, and laughing at your get up, because, you don’t like the attention.

Probably not.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you didn’t choose the costume. It was forced on you and you were shoved into the courtroom. Would you do the yelling, hair-lighting, walking out, walking in, yelling, then the press conference thing?

My guess is that you wouldn’t.

[1] I’ll save you the trouble of a search.

On my kindle

It used be be what I'm reading, but lately I've been reading all my books on the Kindle. Speaking of that, you can get blogs on it, but I have to make it accessible through the Amazon site. I won't go through the hassle if nobody wants it. So let me know.

These are the books I'm reading:

The Art of Styling Sentences: It's a worthwhile read. I've noticed that much of what I write, I mean, the way I write it, is predictable. That makes it boring for me to write and you to read. So, here we are.
Bluebeard: A Novel: One of the few Vonnegut books I haven't read.
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: A compilation of very depressing short stories. Reminds me of Bukowski.
The Winning Brief: Every lawyer should read this. This is my second time going through it.
Blood Meridian: I read it years ago. I've only read a few of Cormac McCarthy's books: this is my favorite.
Freedom: A Novel: I haven't started reading it yet, but I've heard good things.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: I haven't started this yet. I really liked his other book, so I figured why not.

That's pretty much it for now. I've been on a reading tear lately.

Edit: I wanted to mention a blog I ran across the other day, The Appellate Record. I like it. If you like this blog, you'll probably like it to. I wish I could remember how I ran across it. Sometimes things just pop up in my RSS feed.

Books I’m Reading

Every time I pass through a bookstore, used or otherwise, I seem to find a book I like and buy it. That day or a few days later I start reading it and ignoring whatever book or books I've been reading up to that point. This usually leaves me with several books I'm reading at the same time; none of them similar. What does this have to do with the CPLR? Absolutely nothing. I'm just trying to be personable.