She’ll be a month on Friday. Which, not coincidentally, will be the one month anniversary of our last good night of sleep. But who’s counting?

This is, of course, while the Turks and Kurds are rolling up their sleeves.

We are not a people normally credited with the gift of good political timing, but hey, as anyone who attended Fresno State can attest, the party doesn’t start until the Armenians get there.

No one quite captured the sound of an imploding relationship like the ML. In fact, their songwriters’ ears were so attuned to the language of doomed love that they are no longer, apparently, a husband and wife team. Long Live the Mendoza Line.

As the music industry impotently rages against everything around it while CD sales drop, they are lashing out against internet radio providers, who are being asked to pay ridiculous royalty fees to artists (read: record companies) for the privilege of playing their music. Which they already do. But to pay 10 times (or more) what terrestrial radio providers pay? Read more about this current battle in this great article in the SF Weekly.

Though I confess I haven’t seen too many of the performances listed, it’s hard to imagine one better than that of the indefatigable Parker Posey in the 1995 film Party Girl. Any other favorites?

While I did spend most of the last decade and a half working in one bookstore after another, and spent a ridiculous amount of time and money collecting books, not to mention developing a serviceable idea of what kids read, and what parents buy for kids, it never occurred to me that I should have some kids’ books, for when that time came. Of course, there are the odd young-adult titles that I’ve always loved and championed, whether it’s “Watership Down,” or anything by E. L. Konigsburg. I also got the chance to help my wife put together a small library of books for her 8th-grade classroom last year, so I’m pretty solid with the older-age reading level.

But I don’t know much about the younger stuff, that is, one you get past “Where The Wild Things Are,” or “The Story of Ferdinand.” (I’d long been of the opinion that the first book anyone should read is James Joyce’s Dubliners: the fact that the prospective reader might be, say, 5 years old, didn’t generally factor into my thinking.) So I put forth this question: what books, if you have kids, did you first buy for them? Or to read to them? Or for them to chew on and alleviate their teething pains with? Suggested titles or series, perhaps? Thank you all in advance for your thoughts.

 I wanted to pick up a copy of Christopher Hitchens’ new controversial tome about the, well, shortcomings of organized religions. Not that I have a particular horse in this race, as one might say, but who doesn’t love a good screed? And any author who could write an unflattering bio of Mother Theresa must be considered a genius of the form.

But anyway, I noticed something, browsing through Amazon, that I hadn’t much paid attention to before: the little chats and discussions that sprout up on the Amazon pages of popular books, and considering that the Hitchens book has only been out for a month, there are, at the time of this post, 84 discussions, in the “Customer Discussions.” Some have but a paltry entry or two, while one had 220 (“Miracles Prove that God is Real!”); some seemed to offer practical advice (“Here’s a novel idea…If you don’t like the book, don’t read it!”), while others focused on more abstract ideas (“God equals love?”).

Is there anywhere in the universe, virtual or real, that people won’t find away to argue about where we came from, why we’re here, and what happens to us after we die? Which is how I guess I ultimately define “God”: that indefinable thing which we don’t–can’t, at least not in any empirical way–know, but boy, it sure makes life easier to have a tidy way to explain it.

Perhaps my position is best summed up by Woody Allen: “I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.”

THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES by Lawrence Ritter. Originally published in 1984, this historic book is nothing less than the oral history of baseball’s early days, from the very men who played it, without the celebrity or big money involved in the sport today. Simply tracking these fellas down was likely an adventure unto itself. A fantastic read and a compelling piece of American history that should be in every library, personal, public or otherwise.

MONEYBALL by Michael Lewis. The closest thing to a business book that I will confess to actually enjoying. The story of how the Oakland Athletics built a successful franchise, able to compete with teams like the dreaded Yankees who have 4 times the money to spend. How? With ownership that believed in thinking outside of the box and going beyond baseball myths and relying on a revolutionary belief in statistics. Librarians, pay attention to this one.

THE WRONG STUFF by Bill Lee and Richard Lally. Always a good and respected pitcher, Bill “the Spaceman” Lee happened to be an even better eccentric and raconteur, and he chronicles his decade and a half in the big leagues with a bone dry sense of humor.

YOU GOTTA HAVE WA by Robert Whiting. By now Baseball is a multicultural phenomenon and Japanese transplants like Ichiro Suzuki are rock stars over here. On the other hand, Whiting takes a look at life over in the Japanese leagues, including American players spending the twilight of their careers serving stints for teams like the Yakult Swallows or The Yomiuri Giants. Fascinating stuff.