L.K. Rawles

I feel about extreme mountain climbing the way I feel about the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. It’s fascinating as a spectator, but there’s no way I’m climbing into that steel cage with a bucket of chum.

One of my favorite books is Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air,” an account of a disastrous 1996 Everest expedition. When I was browsing through an airport bookstore and saw that Ed Viesturs had been on Everest at the same time, I bought this to hear a different side of the story.

“No Shortcuts to the Top” is Viesturs’ memoir about climbing all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks. It’s an incredible (and incredibly dangerous) feat which has been equaled by fewer than 20 other people.

I haven’t read a lot of memoirs, so maybe this is standard fare. But he came across as kind of a jerk in some places, like when he dishes about a booty call with a French climber. Dude, don’t kiss and tell, particularly when the woman was killed while climbing and can’t contradict you.

There was also a passive-aggressive section about calling his wife on a satellite phone while in the Himalayas. She was six months pregnant with their second child, and he didn’t call her for four days while on Annapurna, the deadliest mountain on earth.

A sat phone can be a blessing, but it’s also a pain. Paula and I never had an explicit agreement about how often I should call. But sometimes she expected that I would call more often than I did. When I’m on a mountain, I need to be focused, in the moment. There are times when the last thing I want to think is, Oh, I’ve got to make a call back to the States. Yet once you have a family and kids, the importance of staying connected increases.

Some people might have thought Paula was being unreasonable, but I took full blame for not calling. It’s just my nature. When other people get upset, I feel as if it’s my fault.

Jerk. “Some people might have though Paula was being unreasonable…” I hope she writes her own book someday.

But aside from those moments of douchery, it was an informative and interesting book. I still prefer “Into Thin Air” because of Krakauer’s journalistic style of writing. I don’t think that memoirs are my thing.

The lasting impression I’ll take away from this book is the same one I take away from Shark Week: Those guys are crazy. In the acknowledgments, Viesturs names nine friends who have died while climbing. Nine. I’m staying at sea level, thank you very much.

Verdict: 6.5 out of 10. It gets an extra half point because it has a very thorough index, which I think is an absolute must for non-fiction books.

I’ve been a horribly inconsistent blogger, so in penance I’ll admit something embarrassing. I spent my evening listening to Kenny G’s Christmas album while my dad taught me how to dance the foxtrot. Beat that! The only possibly way it could have been dorkier is if I’d been wearing a spangled Christmas sweater.

Being a fast reader definitely has its advantages. But a big disadvantage is that I run through books like crazy, and to be honest, I can’t afford the bookstore tab.

I’m on vacation right now, and since Monday night I’ve read the following books, in order:

• “Big Boned,” by Meg Cabot
• “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” by Alexander McCall Smith
• “The Book of Lost Things,” by John Connelly
• “Pearls of Lutra,” by Brian Jacques
• “Tears of the Giraffe,” by Alexander McCall Smith
• “Make Him Look Good,” by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
• “The Gun Seller,” by Hugh Laurie (Okay, this one is only partially finished; I’m trying to stretch it out for the plane ride home.)

Omigod, will everyone who’s not me go see the stupid Bee Movie already? Because Jerry Seinfeld needs to stop hawking his A Bug’s Life ripoff on every channel on which my remote control lands. Dave Foley will forever and always be funnier than you, Jerry!

Having been alive in the 1990s, I have seen dozens of Seinfeld episodes. Indeed, if you’re watching television at 6 p.m., you are pretty much limited to the choice between two Jerrys: Seinfeld and Springer. (Well, if you’re like me and too cheap to spring for more than the most basic of cable.)

Sure, it made me laugh at times. But on the whole, I found Seinfeld almost aggressively unfunny, for more or less the same reason I can’t stand Everybody Loves Raymond: The joke is basically that these are self-involved people being horrible to one another. If I wanted more of that, I’d just go back to high school.

Anyway, in spite of the syndication and endless repetitions of his show, my beef with Jerry Seinfeld had been settled, or at least lay dormant. Until, that is, the PR shock-and-awe campaign to promote his new movie took over my TV set. I’m trying to be reasonable and not be miffed that he made an appearance on 30 Rock. He’s allowed to guest star on things. I guess.

But oh how it pained me to see my John Stewart fawning over Jerry on The Daily Show Thursday.

• That One Band (Our debut CD would be “One-Hit Wonders” and our 2nd CD would be “Letdown.” I came up with this in high school.)
• Fuzzy Little Bunnies
• Gravity Always Wins (This would be my Radiohead-tribute band.)
• We Value Your Patronage
• Dammit, Man!
• Frogland Ambassadors
• Dimestore Ninjas (Partial credit for this one goes to my work friend Rob.)
• The Regretables

Aside from Disney’s read-along books and cassettes (Oh, The Fox and the Hound! How you made me cry!), I was never that into audiobooks as a kid. I think it was mostly that I can read in my head a lot faster than anyone can read aloud, and I have attention-span issues. I remember a long car trip where we brought an audiobook of The Jungle Book along, and my opinion of Rudyard Kipling has suffered as a consequence.

But in 2002 I got into them, and Harry Potter was my gateway drug. The Potter series was perfect for long drives in the car, because I already knew the stories and if I zoned out in the middle, it was no big deal.

Pre-iPod, this meant carrying around the 26-CD box set (which I did when I lived in Prague) and it was a tad cumbersome. But my darling iPod set me free.

So, here are my top 10 audiobook picks, in alphabetical order:

• America (The Audiobook) - The Daily Show’s hilarious civics “textbook” on the American political system. Narrated by John Stewart and the Daily Show cast. Bonus: Unlike the printed edition, there are no nude depictions of Supreme Court justices.
• Assassination Vacation - Sarah Vowell travels to sites connected to the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, offering a humerous but informative history lesson. You have to hear her voice, she sounds like a three-year-old with a head cold. But in a good way.
• The Demon Under the Microscope - The subtitle is “From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for the World’s First Miracle Drug,” and it’s awesome non-fiction.
• Don’t Get too Comfortable - Another author with a unique and nasal voice, David Rakoff talks about Log Cabin Republicans, becoming a U.S. citizen, and midnight scavenger hunts in NYC.
• Half Moon Investigations - This is a children’s book written in the style of 1950s detective-noir, and it’s hysterical. Kids’ books make for great audiobooks because it’s easy to follow the plot.
• The Horse and His Boy - One of my favorite C. S. Lewis books.
• Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris’ essays are best enjoyed aloud. Another unique and very nasal voice.
• The Partly Cloudy Patriot - Collection of Sarah Vowell’s essays on ‘pop-a-shot’ basketball, how the Dallas Cowboys introduced her to existentialism, the ethos of the modern nerd, etc.
• The Secret Garden - One of the few classic kids books where the children are difficult and ill-behaved. This is essentially pleasant background noise.
• Size 14 is Not Fat Either - Fun chick lit by Meg Cabot. A former pop star now working as a college RA becomes embroiled in the investigation into the murder of one of the college’s cheerleaders.

Okay, I’ve returned from my summer blog vacation, with a half-dozen more books under my belt. Oh, the fun we’ll have!

I try not to refer to my devoted literature geekdom as a “love affair with books.” First of all, it’s just a little bit sad, especially when you’re not dating anyone at the moment and you have a cat. Second of all, it would make me a total slut, because I’ll read just about anything.

No, my relationship with books is closer to that of a heroin addict on the junk. (My basic cable suddenly started showing VH1-Classic, so I’ve been watching many band-ographys of 70s musicians. Hence, “on the junk.”)

I’ve chosen books over social situations before. I become irritable when separated from my books. I spend money I can’t afford acquiring books. I frequently talk about books and try to pressure my friends into getting the same books. I have “engaged in secretive or suspicious behaviors, such as making frequent trips to the restroom, basement, or other isolated areas where [book] use would be undisturbed,” especially when I was a kid at family parties.

Ah, my misspent youth. I spent so much time holding books splayed open in one hand that I swear I got carpal tunnel syndrome. I wore out innumerable flashlight bulbs reading under my covers at night. I tried to ride my bicycle while reading books propped up on my handlebars - and I did it more than once, catastrophic bike wrecks notwithstanding. No matter where we were going, I always had at least one book with me. I remember being ticked off at my dad for refusing to let me take a book on to the field during softball games. (Hey, we were 8 years old. No one was going to hit a ball into right field, that’s why they put me there in the first place.)

Nowadays I usually have a book in my purse, but the best technological advance in my life was the iPod, chock-full of audiobooks. You can always lie and tell people that you’re listening to the Decemberists when in fact you are listening to “Assassination Vacation” for the fifth time. Actually, I’ll save my audiobooks habit for my next post.

• escalators
• Cirque de Sole
• “Lost in the Supermarket” by The Clash
• Christian romance novels
• commercials starring dead people
• Justice Antonin Scalia
• the word “proactive”
• attic ladders
• French cars
• incorrect punctuation on signs
• toddlers in bikinis
• Vladimir Putin

A printing press is an extraordinarily heavy object when dropped on someone’s head. - Bob Reid, professor of journalism. R.I.P.

I was at work last night, proofreading the Opinion columns - which up until now I thought I was qualified to do - when columnist Richard Creed broke some startling news to me. Apparently, “fun” is not an adjective, and people who use it that way are uneducated troglodytes.

Most of us over 50 grew up never hearing or seeing fun used as an adjective … My wish is that it would disappear for good and never again rear its ugly little head. The juvenile sound of it is enough to keep me from reading any book in which a character talks that way. - Richard Creed, 06-09-07

That was the first of a two-part series about the use of “fun” as an adjective. This week, readers wrote back to him to comment on it. Here’s Mary Ann Peden-Coviello:

“… as a writer of fiction, I find it sometimes useful, in dialogue, to use fun [as an adjective]. I find it to be a good way to indicate the type of character about which I am writing, as is the use of ain’t or double negatives or non-agreement of subject and verb (‘they wasn’t going,’ for example).”

So saying “I went to a fun party” is like saying “I ain’t never been there?”

Okay, I know the “who/whom” and the “that/which” rules. I use “nauseated” instead of “nauseous.” I know the difference between “affect” and “effect.” I try to avoid using the word “literally.”

It’s just that dangling participles have never kept me up at night, you know? If I’m writing an email, I’ll throw caution to the wind and start a sentence with “and” and end it with “of” or “to.” That’s right, I live on the grammatical edge!

But I never knew that I was misusing “fun,” or that there were people who would judge me for it. Geez.