{"id":5737,"date":"2010-11-12T04:00:59","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T08:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=5737"},"modified":"2010-11-11T19:21:15","modified_gmt":"2010-11-11T23:21:15","slug":"unrequired-reading-nov-12-2010-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-nov-12-2010-3","title":{"rendered":"Unrequired Reading: Nov. 12, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sorry I haven’t done much non-Unrequired Reading posting lately. I’ve been kinda busy with work, but also back to thinking about writing and other projects. Anyway, enjoy this week’s links. I’m off to New Orleans for a conference tomorrow, but maybe I’ll come back with a crazy travelogue or something!<\/p>\n

I like to think this is another Required Reading kickoff, but maybe this piece \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a review of a book about the campaign to free Soviet Jews<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is of limited interest to my gentile readers. I think it’s important\/required, but then I was one of the people in the crowd in the 1987 rally in D.C. (thanks, Mom!).<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Hey! It turns out that there’s a piece of writing by Jonathan Franzen<\/a> that I actually like!<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Speaking of writers and suicide, this appreciation of Stefan Zweig by Andre Aciman<\/a> reminds me that I gotta get back to reading Cultural Amnesia<\/a>\"\" sometime.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I’m fascinated by the business of building and selling airplanes<\/a>, and you should be, too.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

No, really! Even when it gets as ugly as the story about U.S. military’s refueling tanker contract<\/a>, it’s still fascinating!<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Isiah Thomas is utterly delusional<\/a>. (I once gave this book<\/a>\"\" to a pal as a joke gift for the holidays. Not quite as good as the time I asked Charles Smith to sign a publicity photo, “Take it up strong!<\/a>“)<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

To make up for that last link, here’s The Dunk:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Blind Man, Hare Krishnas and Woman – NYC Photographs 1968\u00e2\u20ac\u201c1978 by Paul McDonough<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t make fun of someone’s speech impediment. HOWEVER: you need to go to the Wilson Quarterly’s podcast page<\/a> and listen to the introduction to the Winter 2010 edition. The lisping editor’s attempts at saying “Thucydides” are even funnier than the impression I used to do of Tom Brokaw trying to call a baseball game pitched by Ted Lilly. (Also, bad podcast. Don’t listen to the rest of it.)<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Last week, I did one of those Facebook memes, naming 15 movies that made a lifelong impression on me (in 15 minutes)<\/a>. Somehow, I neglected to add The Night of the Hunter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The lower Hudson Valley sure is beautiful in the autumn<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry I haven’t done much non-Unrequired Reading posting lately. I’ve been kinda busy with work, but also back to thinking about writing and other projects. Anyway, enjoy this week’s links. I’m off to New Orleans for a conference tomorrow, but maybe I’ll come back with a crazy travelogue or something!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,27,4,1083,20,32,3,19],"tags":[1192,323,72,1193,1154,1194],"class_list":["post-5737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basketball","category-big-business","category-literature","category-movies","category-religion","category-sports","category-suburbs","category-urban-issues","tag-charles-smith","tag-david-foster-wallace","tag-isiah-thomas","tag-john-starks","tag-jonathan-franzen","tag-stefan-zweig"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1ux","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5605,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-october-1-2010","url_meta":{"origin":5737,"position":0},"title":"Unrequired Reading: October 1, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"October 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry about the lack of an Unrequired Reading last week. I was way too busy helping put on our conference. I'm way too busy finishing the October issue now, but I figure you deserve some of this. Okay, this is Required \u00e2\u20ac\u201d albeit depressing \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Reading: my pal Mitch Prothero\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0312600844","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5512,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-august-6-2010","url_meta":{"origin":5737,"position":1},"title":"Unrequired Reading: August 6, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"August 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Summer's nearly over, dear readers! Better stock up on some Unrequired Reading! Free Gil! (Arenas) * * * Costuming Inception (spoiler alert) * * * Words can't do justice, so I'll try acronyms: GFY on JLH's TCL (spoiler alert, too, I guess) * * * So, wait: Charlie Chan was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5977,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-april-link-showers","url_meta":{"origin":5737,"position":2},"title":"Unrequired Reading: April Link Showers","author":"Gil","date":"May 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Bizarre! I was just settling in to collect my May Twitter-links for a big Unrequired Reading when I discovered that last month's load o' links never went live! So here's all of April's great stuff! I'll post May's tomorrow! * * * It's time for another month's worth of Twitter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Gin"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Gin","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-gin"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4612,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-oct-30-2009","url_meta":{"origin":5737,"position":3},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Oct. 30, 2009","author":"Gil","date":"October 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Guess who's about to finish his last regular issue of his magazine for the year? (The year-end one is a big directory.) No sad trombone for me! Want some links? Just click \"more\"! \"One-third of female murder victims died at the hands of an intimate, while only about 3% of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5154,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-march-26-2010","url_meta":{"origin":5737,"position":4},"title":"Unrequired Reading: March 26, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"March 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy weekend, dear readers! Have some Unrequired Reading links! Go ahead! I don't mind! Baseball is the only sport I enjoy on the radio. * * * I forget: is Rick Jones still alive? * * * The Situation goes global! * * * As do zombies! * * *\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "baseball"","block_context":{"text":"baseball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/baseball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1116,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-2","url_meta":{"origin":5737,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading","author":"Gil","date":"September 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I've decided to make Unrequired Reading a regular post on Friday mornings. It'll consist of the same stuff I was posting at random in the past few weeks. Which is to say, thanks to the miracle of RSS feeds, VM goofs around online so you don't have to. As my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5737"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5742,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5737\/revisions\/5742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}