Happy February? I don’t know. Welcome to the new month, in any event. Unlike these posts, I can promise it’ll be short…
As I did last month, I’ll roll through the newsletter in the traditional ‘proper admin’ style. I must admit, I do like the method. Proper Admin is back!
But if you don’t like admin reader, then send your complaints right to me - just hit 'reply' in the email and your responses should find me...I think...
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, well, have a look on the right hand side and subscribe to the emails. Easier than going to the blog page every morning, you know?
Anyway, thanks for reading this month.
Tim
Goodbye, ladies
Longtime readers will recall my ‘Hello Ladies’ post that described some of the realities in the publishing world and looked into how those influenced my reading choices.
Reader, I have a longer reflection into that project in the works. But for today, I just thought I would provide a final update of my 2017 tally.
So, without further ado:
January: 4 male authors / 6 female authors
February: 9 / 1
March: 9 / 0
April: 2 / 2
May: 4 / 2
June: 4 / 3
July: 5 / 3
August: 4 / 5
September: 5 / 2
October: 4 / 2
November: 3 / 2
December: 3 / 3
2017 Total: 56 books by male authors (64.4%) / 31 books by female authors (35.6%)
Once I removed any author who appeared more than once, the numbers balanced out a little more:
2017 Adjusted: 41 - 26 (61.2% / 38.8%)
Not good.
I shudder to think of what the numbers would look like if I’d done a ‘Hello, White People’ index.
100 (2014), 100 (2015), 131 (2016)…
On another note, the eighty-seven books I finished in 2017 was my lowest total since 2014. I’m happy with it.
For 2018, I’m still aiming for seventy-two books per year, a target I described in this post back when the blog was truly painful to read. For you math experts out there, it works out to six books per month. Looking over the monthly breakdown above, it looks like I’ve been on the right track since April.
Not bad.
My thought on the big three…
I’m working on a longer post for this thought, as well, and am trying to tie it to a book I read in January about Liverpool Football Club. But for now, let's just get my point in print before everything I predict happens.
Reader, I write this blurb on the morning before the AFC Championship Game – an annual helmet football spectacle that always features the New England Patriots squaring off against an overmatched underdog. This year, the Jacksonville Jaguars are the lucky opponent. (I suppose by the time this goes up, we’ll all know how the game turned out, but that’s fine – TOA isn’t around to analyze helmet football.)
It’s been a little noisier on the news front than usual for the Patriots during these playoffs. The big story was an ESPN article revealing various rifts and feuds among the team’s so-called big three: owner Robert Kraft, head coach Bill Belichick, and quarterback Tom Brady. In the weeks since, there has been a lot of talk about inaccuracies, sources, hidden motivations, on and on and on. The talk all comes back to the article’s one overarching idea – is the Patriots’ historic run finally coming to an end? (And again, that’s all fine, but TOA isn’t around to analyze the sports radio news cycle, either.)
My thought on the whole matter is simple. In troubled organizations, the manager almost always leaves first. It’s so frequent that I’m tempted to call it a Universal Truth. In fact, reader, let's pause briefly to do so, with qualifiers and adverbs added to further generalize the concept and extend its shelf life as A Universal Truth.
A Universal Truth: In most troubled organizations, the manager almost always leaves first, usually.In corporations, managers always get laid off; in professional sports, the manager is always the first one dismissed. So for my money, when this period of helmet football dominance by New England comes to an end, it’ll be when Belichick packs his bags for pastures new. The key distinction is that the run won’t end because he left – the run will be over because he’s leaving. It will be the signal, in other words, of underlying problems in the organization that the manager can do nothing about.
New feature alert: links from January, sort of
Here are three pieces I enjoyed reading (but were not necessarily originally published) this month.
The first looks into the future of big oil. I’m not going to vouch for the science here or comment on the predictions. Like any such piece, I’m sure some of it will come to pass and some of it will look beyond silly in a decade’s time.
I will point out, however, how much I liked the simple observation about electric cars – since most such cars are built with around one-tenth the number of parts as the gas powered car, its victory in the automobile market is inevitable given the near iron-clad law (but not A Universal Truth) that a simple product works better than a complex one.
The second is The Guardian’s interview with Celtics guard Jaylen Brown. I’ve been browsing foreign news sites for around a year now and this is the type of thing I find most valuable – an outsider asking simple questions about some of America’s inner workings. In fact, now that I think about it, it's a lot like the parable in the article...well, never mind, you read it, reader, and jump to your own conclusions.
The final recommendation is a book review only TOA would recognize – Adam Gabbatt read Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury, then attempted to carry out President Trump’s exact lifestyle as described in the book.
But…what about Lombardi? How can we read at a time like this?
A few months ago, I borrowed Michael Lombardi’s organizing concept for signing cornerbacks to help me describe the books I was intending to read in the coming months. I identified the three situations when I often found myself reading – a long unbroken period, a shorter period where I might need to stop at any moment, and end of the day light reading – and choose one book for each category to preview in the newsletter.
I’ve identified all kinds of problems with the approach since that post went up. For one, I don’t really know what category the book is going into until I start reading it. I’m also finding myself increasingly disinterested in describing a book twice (since I’ll review it after I read it). Perhaps the biggest problem is that until I actually read the book, I have nothing to say about it. If I knew what to say, I wouldn’t read the book! So, for those reasons and a few others, the Lombardi concept is done, at least in terms of previewing books here.
I should note, however, my excitement for the book Lombardi is working on. Reader, it's about helmet football!
Did you leave the apartment at all?
I did, actually, even though Boston set some cold weather records in January. I’m a Tough Guy, I’ve heard, a comment I often receive as I wonder why no one else dresses in layers.
A highlight was making it to the MFA on MLK Day. Just a lovely old time, it was. I had an odd realization while I was there, though, about art in general. What does it mean for the art if it requires a written description tacked on the wall next to it? A comedian who stops to explain every joke wouldn’t be considered as funny as someone who just made people laugh, you know?
I assume this realization came as you desperately read about a piece of art you had no hope of ever comprehending?
Ummm…
Right, anything else?
I think the daily posts are going to wrap up soon. I think. I hope.
I’m simply too old for this kind of thing, right? I’ve accomplished what I’ve set out to do in terms of keeping my word about the schedule and maybe it’s time for something else.
So, as 2018 rolls along, look for the weekday schedule to shift. It might mean just one long post each Wednesday or two shorter posts on Tuesday and Thursday. I might use a weekly word count and try to fit posts into it. More details on that, probably, or maybe not, at this time next month.
Thanks for reading in January.
In the next month of …True On Average…
1) We take it outside, briefly...
2) No, I'm not buying a camera!
3) The Business Bro announces another project no one asked for...
See you in February!
