Resolved: It's time to READ more books

We're a week into March – spring is almost here – and although I didn't formally jot down any New Year's resolutions for 2017, if I had, one that would have been near the top of my list is my desire to read more. "So many books ... so little time," reads the slogan printed on one of my tattered, well-worn navy-colored t-shirts that I bought a few years ago at The Elliott Bay Book Company, situated in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It happens to be one of my favorite independent booksellers in the entire country – and it's always on my things to do list whenever I visit Seattle.

When I say to you that I want to "read more," by that I mean read more books. While I stay abreast of current events by reading The New York Times daily, both in print and online, and give a good read to periodicals like The New Yorker and Monocle, the London-based monthly that covers world affairs, culture, food and design, now, every day is like engaging in an American Civics class thanks to the narcissist behavior and dystopian actions of our current president. And, I should mention that perusing my Facebook news feed has become a necessity in order to stay current on what's trending with POTUS 45, too.

But, what about books, you ask? Yes, books, remember them? Books are the foundation behind what made Amazon.com one of the most successful online retailers. Before Twitter, before Facebook, before Netflix, before texting sapped all of our intellectual energy, there were books. I have several bookshelves at home that are lined with hundreds of titles that I've bought or received as gifts over the years. Let's see, I'm proud of my collection of books by The New Yorker writers Roger Angell and Calvin Trillin, among many, and I enjoy reading books about baseball, my favorite sport. However, a few years ago, in a space-saving and budget-cutting effort, I trimmed back on the number of new titles I bought and, instead, decided to start making better use of my local public library.

Looking back on 2016, I can say without boasting that I made good use of my Oakland Public Library card. I checked out about a book a month. One thing I've learned about libraries is this: If you're willing to wait for a popular best-seller or a new title to become available, checking out library books is a good way to save money (and, I might add, bookshelf space) while also showing support for our public libraries.

Both Comedy Central's The Daily Show and the New York Times Book Review are pretty good indicators for learning about good books to read. Before he left The Daily Show, former host Jon Stewart always brought out the best in authors. You could judge by his interest in a book if it was worth reading. New Daily Show host Trevor Noah is carrying on the tradition begun by Stewart.

Among the books which I read during 2016 were:

• Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few by Robert Reich.

• I'd Know That Voice Anywhere by Frank Deford.

• Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America by Calvin Trillin.

• Goodbye: In Search of Gordon Jenkins and Shop Around: Growing Up with Motown in a Sinatra Household, both by Bruce Jenkins.

• Indentured: The Inside Story of Rebellion Against the NCAA by Joe Nocera.

• Federer and Me: A Story of Obsession by William Skidelsky.

Among the ties that bind these titles are my interest in non-fiction, memoirs, sports, and music. And, of course, good writing and good stories always garner my attention.

Looking ahead, I ask: Is it possible that I can increase my output this year so that I'm reading an average of a book a month? Let's see, I've already started Writings on the Wall: Searching For a New Equality Beyond Black and White by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and I'm nearly finished with the current Michael Lewis book, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds. 

Also, I received Eat Drink Delta: A Hungry Traveler's Journey Through the Soul of the South by Susan Puckett as a Christmas gift from my brother, and I recently bought an autographed copy of Trevor Noah's Born A Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood. 

Finally, I've got Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, the acclaimed 674-page memoir by Elvis Costello that spans his almost four-decade music career left over from last year's reading list that I would like to start this year.

There's plenty to look forward to reading while trying to forget everything that's going bad with our democracy, thanks to a certain POTUS. Now, if I can just remember to stop turning on the TV.

Photo: Stained glass sign at The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, courtesy of Google Images.

Independent bookstores: A glimpse into the soul of a city

Contributing to the cultural fabric / Powell's City of Books, Portland, Ore.

The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once said that a bookstore is "one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking."

Thank goodness for bookstores. Thank goodness we are still thinking, too.

Visiting independent bookstores are always a treat because they offer something unique. Whenever I travel, I try to seek them out. They offer a glimpse into the soul of a city and a sense of a pretty cool place to buy a book.

Despite the shuddering of nationwide chain Borders a few years ago and the bland sameness of Barnes & Noble stores throughout the U.S, we can be grateful for the colorfulness of independent bookstores across the country. In cities such as Portland, Ore., independent bookstores like Powell's City of Books – which covers an entire city block and offers maps for its customers – not only are thriving, they contribute to a city's cultural fabric.

READ / Window display outside of
Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle.

A neon READ sign in a window display greets customers as they walk by Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. It's a sign I never tire of photographing each time I visit the bookstore – and I've been coming to Seattle for more than 20 years. With over 120,000 titles to browse, and a spacious interior that includes original fir floors, a beamed ceiling with skylights, and an in-store café, Elliott Bay Book Company is always on our list of places to see – and to buy a book – when we visit our longtime Seattle friends.

Last Saturday, Independent Bookstore Day was celebrated across the United States. It brought to mind the many wonderful and unique independent bookstores I've visited over the years and willingly patronized. A few of them come to mind:

Book Passage in San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Building; Mrs. Dalloway's Literary and Garden Arts in Berkeley; Powell's City of Books in Portland, Ore.; Books & Books  in Coral Gables, Fla.; Lemuria Bookstore in Jackson, Miss.; Faulkner House Books on Pirate's Alley in New Orleans; Common Good Books in Saint Paul, Minn.; and my favorite, Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle.

Bought a good book lately? Remember: Support your local independent bookstore. READ!

Original fir floors, beamed ceilings, plenty of
 books inside Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle.

Tomes Not Drones / Timeless commentary
at Common Good Books, Saint Paul. 

Eat Sleep Read Dig / Window mantra
at Mrs. Dalloway's Literary & Garden Arts,
Berkeley, Calif.

We Recommend ... / Good books,
great atmosphere at Book Passage,
inside the Ferry Plaza Building,
along San Francisco's Embarcadero.

All photos: © Michael Dickens, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.

My New Year's resolution? Read more books!

To read or not to read / So many books ... so little time.

Happy New Year everyone!

We're less than a week into 2016, and just as everyone is writing out their New Year's resolutions, I've jotted down a few of my own.

One resolution that's near the top of my list each year is to read more. "So many books ... so little time," reads the slogan printed on one of my tattered, well-worn navy-colored t-shirts that I bought a few years ago at The Elliott Bay Book Company, one of my favorite independent bookstores in the country, located on Capitol Hill in Seattle, Washington.

Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle /
One of my favorite independent bookstores in the country. 

When I say "read more" I mean books. Oh, sure. I stay abreast of current events by reading The New York Times, both in print and online, on a daily basis, and I enjoy giving a good read to periodicals like Monocle, the London-based monthly that covers world affairs, culture, food, and design. 

And, of course, there's always perusing my Facebook news feed, to stay current on what's trending, too.

But, what about books, you ask?

Roger Angell / This Old Man: All in Pieces.
This book is on my reading list for 2016.

Yes, books, remember them? It's the foundation behind what made Amazon.com one of the most successful online retailers. Before Twitter, before Facebook, before Netflix, before texting sapped all of our intellectual energy, there were books. I have several bookshelves at home lined with hundreds of titles that I've bought or received as gifts over the years. I'm proud of my collection of books by The New Yorker writers Roger Angell and Calvin Trillin, among many. However, a few years ago, in a space-saving and budget-cutting effort, I trimmed back on the number of new titles I bought and, instead, decided to start making better use of the local public library.

Looking back on 2015, I can say without boasting that I made good use of my Oakland Public Library card. I checked out seven books at our local branch library. One thing I've learned about libraries is this: If you're willing to wait for a popular best-seller or a new title to become available, checking out library books is a good way to save money (and, I might add, bookshelf space) while also showing support for public libraries.

Watching Comedy Central's The Daily Show, I've found, is a pretty good barometer about good books to read, and before he left the show last summer, former host Jon Stewart always brought out the best in authors. You could judge by his interest in a book if it was worth reading. Fortunately, new Daily Show host Trevor Noah is carrying on the tradition begun by Stewart.

Among the books which I read during 2015 were:

Mark Bittman on food / A Bone To Pick 

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
Midnight in Siberia by David Green

A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power by Jimmy Carter

The Children of Willesden Green: Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival by Mona Golabek

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan

Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

You Can't Make This Up by Al Michaels

Mona Golabek / The Children of Willesden Lane:
Beyond the Kindertransport:
A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival

A Bone to Pick: The Good News and Bad News About Food by Mark Bittman

Leap: Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want by Tess Vigeland

Among the ties that bind these titles are my interest in non-fiction, memoirs, sports, food, travel and public radio personalities, as well as interest in world religions. And, of course, good writing and good stories always garner my attention.

Looking ahead, I wonder if it's possible that I can increase my output to 12 books, thus reading an average of a book a month? Let's see, I've already started a wonderful memoir by the gifted New Orleans actor Wendell Pierce, The Wind in the Reeds: A Storm, a Play, and the City That Would Not Be Broken, and I received Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta by award-winning adventure writer Richard Grant as a Christmas gift from my brother. Plus, I can't wait to begin reading Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, the acclaimed 674-page memoir by Elvis Costello that spans his almost four-decade music career. So, yes, reading a book a month seems like a reasonable goal.

I'm optimistic.

Now, if I can just somehow find a way to unplug my TV set and turn off my iPhone.

Photos of Elliott Bay Book Company by Michael Dickens © 2015. Book illustrations: Courtesy of Google Images. 

A New Year's resolution: Read more books!

Reflections from a bookstore window /
 The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle.

So many books ... so little time, reads the slogan printed on one of my tattered navy-colored t-shirts. It's a well-worn one that I bought a few years ago from The Elliott Bay Book Company, one of my favorite independent bookstores, located in Seattle.

As the middle of January approaches, many of us -- including yours truly -- are still drawing a list of New Year's resolutions. 

One of my resolutions for 2014 is to read more. Oh, sure, I stay abreast of current events by reading The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle, both in print and online, on a daily basis, and I enjoy giving a good read to the Life & Arts section of the Financial Times of London each weekend.

And, of course, there's always perusing my Facebook newsfeed, too, to stay current on what's trending.

But, what about books, you might ask? Yes, books, remember them? Before Twitter, before Facebook, before texting sapped all of our intellectual energy, there were books.

Looking back on 2013, I can say with pride that I made better use of my Oakland Public Library card than ever before. I checked out several books at our local branch library. I've learned that if you're willing to wait for a popular best-seller to become available, checking out library books is a good way to save money (and, I might add, bookshelf space) while also showing support for one's local public library.

Watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report regularly, I find both shows to be good barometers about good books to read -- and Stewart, especially, is one of the best interviewers on TV and always brings out the best in authors. You can judge by Stewart's interest in a book if it is worth reading. 

With kudos to Stewart, among the books which I checked out from my local public library last year -- and read cover to cover -- were:

Fawzia Koofi:
"As you grow older
you will learn
about loyalty."

• Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter by the American sportswriter, novelist and NPR commentator Frank Deford.

• The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future by the Afghan politician and women's rights activist Fawzia Koofi. 

• Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by the highly successful American pro basketball coach Phil Jackson.

• Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography by the American journalist Richard Rodriguez.

Currently, I am ploughing my way through the 468-page Cooked: A Natural Transformation by the American author, journalist, activist and academic Michael Pollan.

I tend to favor non-fiction over fiction books. One thing that unites my list of books I read last year is a spiritual quality found in each of them. For instance:

In Darling, Richard Rodriguez, who is considered one of the most prominent Hispanic essayists in America, speaks out of an illumination of the “desert God” of Judaism, Christianity and Islam — a divinity that “demands acknowledgment within emptiness”, wrote The New York Times in its Sunday Book Review section last fall. And, for Rodriguez, who is gay, it extends to a more personal history, too: the ways in which he has resisted, and felt himself resisted by, the Roman Catholic Church.

In Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter, The New York Times wrote of Frank Deford: "His work has helped shape our contemporary view of sports as an enterprise populated not by sublime gods, untouchable athletes, heroes and goats, but by beings recognizable as men and women."

Meanwhile, in Fawzia Koofi's memoir, The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future, written to her daughters, she explores the complexities of Afghan society and Islam and her determination to become an educated woman and live in freedom despite constant threats on her life by Islamic extremists.

Eleven Rings:
The Soul of Success

Finally, there's plenty to absorb in Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, and Phil Jackson quotes from the Grateful Dead, William James, Thelonius Monk, Abraham Maslow and Lao-Tzu, among many. The book reflects Jackson's polymathy. "In the space of a page, he toggles from psychotherapy to Native American customs to Christianity to Buddhism and back to 'two recent studies published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology'," The New York Times wrote in its review of the book.

As my time allows, this year I would love to go back and catch up with some of my favorite authors like Calvin Trillin (Alice, Let's Eat), Roger Angell (The Summer Game) and Michael Lewis (Moneyball). While I've read many of the books written by Trillin, Angell and Lewis -- all of them wonderful American authors -- I haven't read them all!

Also, I would love to tackle the intellect of the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and the literary brilliance of Stephen Fry and Nick Hornby.

Add to that, I've always been intrigued by the late Eudora Welty, the American author of short stories and novels about the American South, and would love to make the time to read one of her short story collections.

If I can average to read a book a month in 2014 -- 12 by the end of the year -- I'll be happy and, I'm sure, feel enriched by the experience. 

Indeed, so many books ... so little time.

Photo of Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, by Michael Dickens, copyright 2013.

Dateline Seattle: All the world's a fair in the Great Northleft

Left ...

Right ...

... and Center

Art in the Great Northleft. That's the description for this year's Bumbershoot, Seattle's annual showcase music and art festival, that wrapped up on Labor Day, just as it has every year since 1971. Bumbershoot is held on the grounds of the 74-acre Seattle Center, home of the iconic Seattle Space Needle.

Sunday at the Starbucks Stage /
Enjoying the Duke Robillard Band.

At this year's Bumbershoot, over the course of two days, my wife and I and friends enjoyed music by Death Cab For Cutie, Ra Ra Riot, Mates of State and the Duke Robillard Band and stand-up comedy by 30 Rock co-star Judah Friedlander, with whom we later enjoyed a serendipitous, five-minute conversation while walking about the Seattle Center grounds on Monday afternoon.

Also, we gathered for "Nerdprov", which crossed the streams of geek culture with comedic improvisation, as performed by the Seattle Experimental Theater; and we viewed a trio of Seattle International Film Festival Jury Award-winning one-reelers from Australia, Canada and Spain.

Bumbershoot at twilight.

I've visited Seattle nearly every year at this time for the last 20 years, and I never tire of going to Bumbershoot, drinking Seattle's best coffee, or taking photographs of the Space Needle, which was built for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. As it happened, this year I could have left my umbrella at home for it stayed dry throughout the four days we visited the Emerald City.

Seattle's given us Starbucks in the seventies, grunge rock in the eighties and Amazon.com in the nineties. It's home to the Elliott Bay Book Company, one of the country's outstanding independent booksellers. There's a certain geeky, caffeinated quality to this northwest city that I enjoy, and it's only a two-hour flight up the Pacific coast from San Francisco.

"To some extent, Seattle remains a frontier metropolis, a place where people can experiment with their lives, and change and grow and make things happen," wrote Tom Robbins, the American author whose best-selling novels are "seriocomedies" that are often wildly poetic and told with strong social and philosophical undercurrents.

Indeed, all the world's a fair in the Great Northleft.

All photographs by Michael Dickens, copyright 2013.