The reading log of Ben Ostrowsky, a librarian and geek with a taste for nonfiction and sf.

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posted by Ben Ostrowsky at 7:00 PM

Am I pig enough for you yet?: voices of the barnyard
Shaff, Valerie (photography), and Roy Blount, Jr. (poems)

I don't often use the word delightful without any trace of irony, so collect all four while supplies last. Valerie Shaff's photos of barnyard animals would be goofy enough to make anyone chuckle, but it's Roy Blount, Jr.'s poems that evoke each animal's personality so vividly that those chuckles will become out-loud laughter. Granted, you have to be the type of person who thinks animals are more than beef on the hoof (if you enjoyed Babe, you absolutely must read this book), but it's a stony-hearted clod of clay who won't smile broadly at the very least while reading this.
posted by Ben Ostrowsky at 6:58 PM

300
Miller, Frank (story and art), and Lynn Varley (colors)
A bold retelling of the Spartan-Persian battle of Thermopylae, during which a tiny force of 300 Spartans held the 'Hot Gates' for three days against the overwhelming numbers of Xerxes' amalgamated army, some tens or hundreds of thousands of invaders. When their defenses were overrun (only after an outcast repaid his rejection by the Spartan leader Leonidas with a military betrayal), the 300 chose a heroic death which ultimately inspired the city-states of Greece to unite against Persia. Frank Miller's dark and often germanely gruesome illustrations, in an appropriately epic horizontal comic format, bring this story to life as no prose ever could. "Up until then I saw heroes as people who generally had an awful lot of power over the situation," he said in an interview. "This was, to my young eyes, a shocking story of people willing to die for their beliefs, rather than simply being on the right side of things and having all the weapons."
posted by Ben Ostrowsky at 1:15 PM

Bobos in paradise: the new upper class and how they got there
Brooks, David
Bobos (bourgeois bohemians) enjoy blending work and play, are willing to spend lordly sums on peasant-looking furnishings, and take vacations among simple but good folk who don't know why anyone would choose to vacation in Montana. Who are these freaks, and where did they come from? David Brooks tells you the sad truth: if you're reading his book, or my blog, you're probably a Bobo too. You might not be a professor or an investment banker trying to slum it at a local coffeehouse, but you've definitely got Bobo tendencies. Move over, 'Yuppies', there's a new sociological buzzword in town.
posted by Ben Ostrowsky at 12:57 PM