The Force Is With VW

I just saw the new Volkswagen commercial and I love it. In fact I find that it eerily kind of fits my geekiness to a "t". To bad my force powers don't work on my car....

2010 Books In Review

This last year I read more than I have in a long time. It's kind of funny, when I was home recently I discovered reading lists that I've kept since preschool and all of them were pages long, so I guess that reading tons isn't a new thing. I read somewhere that George W. Bush read 96 books while he was in office his first year and I wanted to beat that number but I didn't discover it until the middle of the year so I never really had a chance. I made it to 66 book this year which beat the number I read last year, but I have to admit I hit burn out in the months of Nov + Dec. I don't know if I can make it to 96 books in the next year but I think I'm going to try.

I've decided to compile a list of my top 5 books of the last year (in no particular order):

1. "I Am Murdered" by Bruce Chadwick. This book is about the murder of George Wythe, patriot and American, by his stepson. Wythe greatly influenced Thomas Jefferson and his framing of the constitution and the story of the murder and trial in colonial times is fascinating. In addition you can tour Wythe's house in Colonial Williamsburg today.

2. "Public Enemies" by Bryan Burrough. If you watched the movie with Johnny Depp (which stunk) don't let that put you off this book. For 2 years during the great depression a whole slew of "famous" gangsters terrorized the midwest. This book delves into the legends of people like Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and the Barker gang and explores modern myth with the facts of who these people really were. I really enjoyed reading this book and Dillenger's car that he used in one of the getaways described in the book is in the BWI airport by the Southwest ticket counter.

3. "The Big Burn" by Timothy Egan. This is the story of the greatest forrest fire ever, which occurred in 1910, and how it influenced Teddy Roosevelt to preserve the national parks and influenced forrest fire control policy, for better or worse, for the next 50 years. This was one of the best books I've read this year!

4. "The Day We Lost the H-Bomb" by Barbara Moran. In 1966 a mid-air collision resulted in 4 hydrogen bombs being lost over the coast of spain. 3 were recovered on the ground but one couldn't be found. It was located in the ocean but who would get to it first, the soviets or the U.S.? The fact that this book isn't fiction is scary. This was tied with "The Big Burn" for my best book of the year vote. Very easy to read because it's so interesting and absorbing, one caution, you won't be able to put it down.

5. "One Bullet Away" by Nathaniel Fick. This book describes what it is like to be a Marine officer, from initial training at OCS to leading the initial ground assault into Iraq. Reading this book made me so grateful for the men and women who serve our country. I forget who said it but in the USMC museum at Quantico there is a quote "There is no better friend, no worse an enemy, than a United States Marine".