Letters of Note has a letter from J.D. Salinger refusing to sell the rights for a movie adaptation of Catcher in the Rye.

Wow, here’s some beautiful, meticulous work graphing the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Just one example of the many illustrations:

I can safely say I never thought of them that way, reading them when I was a kid.

There are many cool things about Neil Gaiman’s bookshelves, but for me the only thing truly revelatory is that they aren’t really built-ins. If you zoom in, you can see that they are held up with many heavy-duty shelf standards. I had no idea shelf standards could achieve awesomeness if only you used enough of them, and paired them with nice-looking shelves (and tons and tons of books).

The prospect of using Google Books they way you might an actual library looks bleak:

Start with dates. To take GB’s word for it, 1899 was a literary annus mirabilis, which saw the publication of Raymond Chandler’s Killer in the Rain, The Portable Dorothy Parker, André Malraux’ La Condition Humaine, Stephen King’s Christine, The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society, Robert Shelton’s biography of Bob Dylan, Fodor’s Guide to Nova Scotia, and the Portuguese edition of the book version of Yellow Submarine, to name just a few.

(via tmn)

Phil Gyford compiled a list of all the books from the Metafilter thread What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople? (via waxy)

Imagine how screwed you’d feel—on at least two levels—if Chemical Shifts and Coupling Constants for Silicon-29 was one of your college textbooks. $8,539! The reviews are very funny. Here’s an example:

My bank just received a major TARP bailout package, so me and my buds in top-level management got our quarterly bonuses after all. Vegas junkets are too conspicuous these days and black caviar from the Caspian Sea is getting a little old hat, so I bought a copy of Landolt-Bornstein’s “Chemical Shifts and Coupling Constants for Silicon-29” for another V.P. as a gag gift. Last week when I flew to Bora-Bora for a weekend management retreat there he was, reading it on the beach! He had some reservations about how a couple of the formulas were expressed, but apart from that he thought it was well-researched and compellingly written. On his recommendation I’m going to pick up a copy for myself to read at the next management retreat in Dubai. This book has some legs.

P.S. “scamsandhoaxes” is the closest tag I have for something like this. It’s no hoax, as near as I can tell, but wow, what a scam.

P.P.S. Found this by going from here to here to here.

Here’s how Google’s book scanning machine manages to return page scans with no trace of binder distortion, while leaving the book completely intact.

Kamni Khan posts an ode to actual, physical books. Among other thoughts, Khan imagines if the books in The Reader were replaced by a Kindle:

Would Michael use it in the tub? It’s not waterproof, so there’s a high probability of damaging it. Would Hanna throw it to the floor in a rage of passion, right before another lovemaking encounter? Highly unlikely! The breakable Kindle, as we all know, comes at a hefty retail price. Hanna wouldn’t ask Michael where he got a particular book; the answer would always be Amazon.com.

I just finished The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs, in which he attempts to follow the Bible as literally as possible for a full year, and really enjoyed it. I was expecting humorous mockery of some of the absurd rules a la that Jeb Bartlett lambasting of the Dr. Laura character on The West Wing—and it is indeed very funny—but instead I was quite impressed by how hard Jacobs works to get at what the real meaning behind these rules are, his delving into many different sects, practices, and interpretations, and in general how even-handed he is about the whole thing.

That said, his long-suffering wife’s response to his following Leviticus 15:20, “everything upon which she leis during her impurity [menstruation] shall be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean,” is a riot:

I came home this afternoon and was about to plop down on my official seat, the gray pleather armchair in our living room.

“I wouldn’t do that,” says Julie.

“Why?”

“It’s unclean. I sat on it.” She doesn’t even look up from her TiVo’d episode of Lost.

OK. Fine. Point taken. She still doesn’t appreciate these impurity laws. I move to another chair, a black plastic one.

“Sat in that one, too, “ says Julie. “And the ones in the kitchen. And the couch in the office.”

In preparation for my homecoming, she sat in every chair in the apartment, which I found annoying but also impressive. It seeming in the biblical tradition of enterprising women—like Judith, who seduced the evil general Holofernes, only to behead him when he was drunk.

I finally settle on Jasper’s six-inch-high wooden bench, which she had overlooked, where I tap out emails on my PowerBook with my knees up to my chin.

Neil Gaimen takes note of a couple reviews for his new one, The Graveyard Book:

The New York Times made it an Editor’s Choice, but not The Boston Globe, in the first example of Thumper’s “if you can’t say something nice about someone don’t say anything” motto book-reviewing I can remember. The entire review is:

“I found the book ghastly, literally and metaphorically, and since Gaiman is a writer whose inventive genius I respect, I’ll pass on without further comment.”

…which just left me wondering how something can be metaphorically ghastly. (“It was ghastly — and I mean that metaphorically!”) and concluding that Liz Rosenberg is probably trying to use metaphorically as the opposite of literally, whereas what she actually meant was that it was ghastly in several senses of the word (ie. filled with dead things and ghosts and she didn’t like it one little bit). Ah well. I hope she likes the next thing, whatever that is.

Donald Westlake, veritable owner of the comic crime caper genre, has died. I loved the Dortmunder books. There’s one more to look forward to, and then that’s it. Sigh. RIP.

Great cover on Carrie Fisher’s memoir, Wishful Drinking:

Seed Magazine’s 2008 science & nature picks (also pages 2 and 3). I’ll have to dig into some of these, maybe Bonk first:

There are many humorous science books. There are not many hilarious science books. With Bonk, a review of science’s study of sexual behavior, Mary Roach has written a volume so viscerally funny, it’s easy to overlook how obsessively she researched her subject. But Roach’s tales of a day with pig inseminators, a hands-on experience with penile implants, and a romp under an ultrasound machine serve as not-so-subtle reminders of her commitment to writing the first-ever comprehensive book on sex research.

Joseph Sullivan at The Book Design Review picks his favorite book covers of 2008. The Obsession cover needs a closer look to fully appreciate.

Coach Sommer, who you may remember from articles like Building an Olympic Body through Bodyweight Conditioning or Developing the Hanging Leg Lift, has a post up on a very interesting "prehab" exercise, Wall Extensions:

Wall Extensions are a relatively simple movement that can be quite effective in treating what I have occasionally referred to as "Bench Press Syndrome"; or a greatly reduced range of motion throughout the shoulder girdle due to an incorrectly designed exercise program.

Just tried these, there is only one way to describe my performance: I sucked. Which is totally unfair, since I don't bench, and work harder on pullups than pushups. Sigh, stupid computer job. Definitely something to add to my regular stretch breaks.

Also, very exciting, his long-awaited book on gymnastic strength training for the layperson, Building the Gymnastic Body is available for preorder! As you can see from the link, you can also buy it with DVDs and/or rings if you want.

• John Berardi posted a comprehensive, balanced piece on soy at his forums.
• Coach Sommer describes a brutal abdominal exercise, "The Crank".
• I'm getting started with barbell training, so bought a copy of Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore. Looks fantastic. And I just learned you can ask questions of the man himself at the Mark Rippetoe Q&A Strength Mill Forum. I would definitely read the book, the stickies, and take advantage of the search feature before posting (here's why).

I've been meaning to write a review Ross Enamait's Full Throttle Conditioning DVD and manual for quite awhile. I really liked it, and I'm long overdue in writing it up. This time though, laziness has it's rewards, as Scott Helsley went ahead and wrote the review I would have written. I could try and rehash those sentiments in my own words, but why?

I also liked this note from one of the comments:

I also agree with you on Full Throttle Conditioning. It's a great product, and at $25 for both a DVD and a manual, a steal. I will say that it would probably be best to have either Infinite Intensity or Never Gymless (or both) along with FTC to get a fuller scope of what can be done. Hell, you can get all 3 for $85, which feels like grand larceny considering the amount of info Ross provides.

I think this is a good point. If you don't have any of Ross's products, getting either Infinite Intensity (dumbbell oriented) or Never Gymless (bodyweight oriented) plus Full Throttle Conditioning would make for a very nice package.

I read this—could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL team?—and immediately ordered the book it came from, Andy Roddick Beat Me with a Frying Pan.

I've endorsed Ross Enamait's books many times on this weblog. Top-notch material, so of course I'm very excited his first DVD (with booklet) is now out: Full Throttle Conditioning. The training videos he has posted online are always impressive, so I'm looking forward to seeing what he's done here. I'm ordering mine today.

T-Nation is running a good article titled 50 Tips for Serious Athletes. The last tip suggests, "for team training, play games with your athletes." Included in the list is "speedball", which I'd never heard of. Sounds like fun though.

I can't remember how, but I stumbled across a reprint of a Stuart McGill (the back fitness and rehab guy, coincidentally recently mentioned by De Vany) article dealing with Low Back Exercise and "Superstiffness". It reminded me that I really want to get his Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance book. Looks like it's in it's third edition now. Maybe Santa will bring it to me.

Here's the short version: if you are any kind of athlete (except pure endurance athlete, like a marathoner), you need (need!) to buy one of Ross Enamait's books. Go with Infinite Intensity if you want to work weights into the mix, or his new one, Never Gymless if you want to go (mostly) equipment-free. Absorb what he teaches, put in the work (and boy, do I mean work), and you'll reap tremendous benefits in strength, power, speed, and endurance. Now, the long version...

Never Gymless is the third book I've bought from Ross. I previously reviewed The Underground Guide to Warrior Fitness and Infinite Intensity. It's going to be difficult to bring anything new to the discussion, as Never Gymless is essentially a combination of those two books, bringing the emphasis on bodyweight exercises from TUGTWF (which has been discontinued, as Never Gymless supercedes it) and program creation from Infinite Intensity.

The book is fantastic. You can't go wrong with either it, or Infinite Intensity. The primary difference is in the training methods presented: Infinite Intensity includes bodyweight exercises, but also lots of dumbell exercises. There are no dumbells in Never Gymless. It's all bodyweight exercises, but there's no doubt from reading the book (and watching Ross's videos) that you can get very strong with bodyweight exercise alone (Ross does include additional material on intensifying certain exercises with resistance bands). The book goes way beyond being a mere catalog of exercises though. Perhaps I can give you a good sense of it by going through the table of contents with some thoughts and a few short excerpts (page numbers in parens):

• Introduction (3)

  "I am constantly trying new things in a never-ending quest to improve my abilities and the abilities of those individuals I train. Rather than revising The Underground Guide for a fourth time, I wanted to start from scratch. I felt the need to create a true one-stop resource for training methods that require little or no equipment."

• The Duel (bodyweight training vs. weight lifting) (5)

  "Whether you use bodyweight exercise, weights, or sandbags, each modality is simply a means to an end. The end is the development of a complete athlete. There have been world champion fighters who swore by bodyweight exercise, while others thrived in the weight room. What does this tell us? The obvious answer is that several roads can lead towards the developmentt of an elite athlete. With a regular dose of hard work and a properly designed program, you can use almost any modality to enhance your physical perparation. This book will outline a bodyweight driven path."

• Training Principles (15)

  No quote here: just the section headings: Variety; Long Term Development; Purpose Driven Training; and Training for Specific Qualities. Great chapter, loved learning about intensity and recovery, training multiple strength qualities like maximal strength vs. explosive strength vs. strength endurance, etc. All the pieces, with conditioning, that need to be assembled into a plan.

• Pulling Strength & Power (32)

  26 pages on pulling exercises: pull-ups, muscle-ups, one-arm varieties, progressions for beginners to advanced athletes. You wouldn't think there'd be that much to say on this subject, but it's all good, no filler.

• Pushing Strength & Power (58)

  See above, but for pushing exercises. So many interesting varieties, and again, the progressions are great. Probably one of the best things about the book. Lots of creative uses of cinderblocks and tow straps as well.

• Lower Body Strength & Power (90)

  See above again, but for the lower body.

• Isometrics (110)

  These really seem worth including in any fitness plan, especially when you consider the short time commitment to produce what sound like excellent returns: "Another study examined the effect of weight training and explosive isometrics (together) on martial arts kicks and palm strikes. The experimental group working with weights and explosive isometrics realized significant increases in both peak force and speed. This study confirmed that speed can be enhanced by supplementing your martial arts training with strength work and explosive isometrics (Olsen, P.D & Hopkins, W.G, 1999). Fortunately, after reading this text, you can use bodyweight exercise in place of weight training. Therefore, you can produce noticable improvements in kicking and punching speed without equipment."

• A Powerful Core (127)

  One of the things I loved about Infinite Intensity was what it did for my core strength. More good stuff here in Never Gymless. "Exercises such as the crunch and sit-up do in fact offer some benefits, but clearly not enough. These exercises fail to address many of the movement patterns assoiated with the core. Primary movements of the core include extension, flexion, lateral flexion, rotation, and stabilization." Creative equipment hacks here, including powerful-looking resistance band movements, and some killer homemade double-wheel exercises.

• Conditioning is King (157)

  As usual, thankfully, Ross's conditioning workouts are again from hell (in a good way), emphasizing high speed, high intensity, and high fatigue. Love the "enhanced interval training" and "integrated circuit training" descriptions.

• Nutrition (173)

  The nutrition chapter is fascinating, and marks the biggest departure from The Underground Guide. That book talked a great deal about supplementation, while this book focuses on eating natural and healthy. Quite a few well-deserved slams against the food industry to go with tons of common-sense advice. One gets the impression this chapter could have been expanded into it's own book. I'm definitely going to have to check out some of Ross's sources for further reading.

• Program Design (194)

  Ah, like in Infinite Intensity, program design is the heart of this book. The individual pieces are great, but it's how to put them together into a program that will take you to higher levels of athleticism that Ross really wants to teach.

  "My training philosophy is one that integrates several methods, all with the goal of creating an athlete who is always ready for whatever life or competition may throw at him. Unfortunately, many training plans fail to comply with this simple concept. Rather than training for multifaceted development, individual attributes are developed separately. For example, an athlete may develop maximal strength for several weeks. He then shifts his emphasis towards explosive strength. After serveral weeks of explosive strength training, he shifts gears yet again, this time towards strength endurance. While working on this attribute, the improvements in maximal strength, which were developed several weeks earlier, are all but lost. Explosive strength also fades as the athlete dedicates all of his time towards strength endurance. As one attribute improves, previously developed attributes gradually decline."

  I've never liked the "peaking for one event" model of periodization I'd come to associate with the term, and love Ross's "always ready" approach to periodization. For me, this alone made Infinite Intensity worth the price of admission, and I'm happy to see the ideas reiterated here. Like Infinite Intensity, this book includes a sample 50-day plan, but Ross emphasizes again and again that you must tailor the plan to your needs. I think the sample plan in Never Gymless forces you to put a bit more thought into this as an individual, and that's a good thing.

• Frequently Asked Questions (224)

  Rather than discuss this, check out Ross's online FAQ (which includes how to pronounce his name :-). It's not the same FAQ as in the book.

• Works Cited (230)

  An excellent reading list.

• Exercise List (232)

  I count 136 different exercises listed here.

Well, another Enamait product, another rave. Sorry for being a broken record, but I simply feel the man puts out the best fitness books on the market.

P.S. I realized I've been presenting buying Infinite Intensity or Never Gymless as an either/or proposition. Personally, I'm happy to have both, as I plan on liberally borrowing from each when I design my next 50-day plan.

Ross Enamait's new book, Never Gymless is now available to order! Just put my order in. Review to follow...

In a recent post I mentioned Ross Enamait and his books. Let me try and do more justice to the two books of his I own.

First up is The Underground Guide to Warrior Fitness (now discontinued). Here's a quick rundown:

• More bodyweight exercises for the upper body, core, and legs than you can shake a stick at. After a lot of searching I found a good number of these online, but many were completely new to me, and the book collects them all in one place.
• Fifteen different animal walks and jumps (e.g. bear walk).
• Balance training (so often overlooked, but I really think this has made a difference for me - I'm saving this subject for a separate post).
• His stretching chapter is more a discussion of different stretching styles than detailed routines or exercises, so you'll want a separate source for those (see my "Books" section to the right).
• The conditioning section is all high-intensity work, and goes into lots of detail on various forms of interval training and explosive exercises.
• The nutrition chapter is fascinating, with a lot of discussion on various supplements and how elite athletes diet must differ from that of your average sedentary drone. I have not put much of this into play for myself yet though, so can't comment on it first-hand.
• Routines, routines, routines! Ross includes a bunch of ready-made routines putting it all together. You could easily build your own with all the information provided, but it's great to have so many off-the-shelf options, which also serve as great jumping-off points for improvisation.
• No equipment necessary! Well, you'd greatly benefit from a pull-up bar (I got mine for $25), an ab wheel ($10 or so), and a two-by-four, but otherwise your only equipment costs are the book itself and your workout clothes.

As I mentioned in my other post, you could build a lifetime's worth of workouts from the material contained here. So why buy any of his other books?

Well, I recently picked up his new one, Infinite Intensity. I did this mostly for inspiration, as it was billed as containing more advanced exercises than The Underground Guide to Warrior Fitness, many of which I have not mastered yet. Sure enough, many of the exercises are currently out of my league. However, the book was still a fantastic purchase with direct relevance to where I am now in my fitness. A quick summary, from the book's page:

• Dumbbell training for power and strength
• Advanced bodyweight exercises
• Isometrics
• Weighted and bodyweight core movements
• Low budget options for homemade training equipment
• Heavy bag drills for enhanced punching power
• Conditioning drills to enhance each energy system
• An analysis of periodization for combat athletes
• Research from world renowned sports scientists
• Commonly neglected areas such as the hands and neck
• A 50 day training program
• And much, much more...

First off, the exercises complement and extend what is in Warrior Fitness, and the chapter on isometrics was completely new to me and compelling (moreso as the two gymnastic holds I'm working on are isometric in nature). But the big thing that makes the book worthwhile right now, even if you're nowhere close to such feats as a one-arm chin, is this: where Warrior Fitness gives you everything you need to build a fantastic workout, Infinite Intensity gives you everything you need to put those workouts together for a complete, long-term, training lifestyle. Personally, the chapter on periodization was worth the price of admission alone. I had always written off periodization because of it's emphasis on peaking for a certain key event, but it turns out that's only one kind of periodization. There are other forms that are relevant to longer seasons and year-round fitness, which is much more what I'm after.

A few final general notes...

All Ross's books are geared towards fighters, but the techniques are highly relevant for any competitive athlete, or those simply dedicated to getting into better shape.

The books are spiral-bound, which I understand can be a turnoff for some, but I really like being able to fold them over.

Finally, Ross is a one-man operation. He is self-published, fills the orders personally, encourages and answers all e-mail questions, and is an active participant in his forums. My books arrived almost instantly (I'm sure it helps that we both live in the northeast), and my few e-mail communications with him have shown him to be very responsive and helpful.

In short, I can't recommend his books highly enough. I love the two I have, but I bet they're all great.

Oh, last thing, if you want to get a better sense of Ross's writing and exercise routines before buying, here are his articles and videos.

UPDATE: The Underground Guide to Warrior Fitness has been superceded by Never Gymless. Here's my review.

Having only skimmed the exercises previously, I'm now giving Ultimate Flexibility by Sang H. Kim a good thorough cover-to-cover treatment. While I've been stretching every day for at least eight months now—and have enjoyed some benefits—I probably haven't been as efficient in my efforts or visualization as I could be. For example, I haven't been focusing on reciprocal inhibition in my stretching, and I should be. Reciprocal inhibition refers to your muscles operating in pairs: when one contracts (the agonist), its partner (the antagonist) relaxes. I think actively concentrating on this phenomenon will help my stretching. From the book:

The result of this function is that the muscle that is not contracting is inhibited, i.e. its ability to contract is suppressed. This principle can be used to enhance the results of your stretching program by inducing the inhibition response just prior to stretching a muscle. For example, when stretching your hamstring muscles in a forward bend, focus on contracting your quadriceps by pulling upward, as if you were pulling your kneecaps up toward your hips. The contraction of your quads signals your hamstrings to release further, allowing you to achieve a deeper stretch. This technique also develops strength in the quads. If you apply this principle to each stretch, you will build both strength and flexibility in opposing pairs of muscles, a nearly perfect model for increasing your flexibility.

Even just skimming the exercises I knew the book was a keeper, but now that I'm getting deeper into it, I'm finding it even more valuable.