The best book I ever read: a Blog Off post

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What's the best book you ever read?"

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This is a tough one and I'm having a hard time narrowing it down to just one. I've been a prolific reader my whole life and different periods have always revolved around different books. I remember reading Alex Haley's Roots when I was in sixth grade and I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever read.

In high school I bounced between Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace. When I went away to college I was all about Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage until I ran into John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire. I thought that was the most profound thing I'd ever read. A couple of years later I stumbled across John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces and it held the title of best book I ever read for a number of years.

I learned to read when I was around four and since then I've cycled through countless Best Books I Ever Read. Whether fiction or non-fiction, there's always been something at the top of the pile. But I suppose the last ten years or so have brought with them a less flexible sense of the Best Books. I have my lifetime favorites of course and I do go back and re-read some of them from time to time. But not all of them are great. These same last ten years have had me gravitating toward the social criticism (fiction and non-) from the late 19th early part of the 20th Centuries.

The times we live in now are largely the result of societal shifts that took place over the last 100 years. Going back and reading what was a contemporary commentary from 1890 and seeing how times have changed or not changed since then is endlessly fascinating to me. It drives home the point that history is a continuum and that I'm part of that same continuum. It also tells me that human beings have always been human beings. We have the same emotional range, regardless of the era and the times. There's nothing I feel or think today that hasn't been felt or thought in an endless loop since Homo sapiens first graced the scene.

So with that said, there are three books that sit at the top of my favorite book pantheon and they've help that spot for a while. I'm sure it'll shift with time but on 31 August 2011, those three books are:

Jacob Riis' How The Other Half Lives. In 1890, Jacob Riis exposed the horrific conditions that New York's tenement dwellers lived in. Due to his book and its accompanying photographs, there arose a movement to clean up the inner cities in this country and at the same time a sense that there are minimum standards in which people should live and that it's in a society's best interest to establish and enforce those minimum standards.

Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt from 1922 is a scathing indictment of conformity, suburban and bohemian alike. George F. Babbitt is a Realtor and early in the novel his professional life's described as making "nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry,” but that he is “nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.” It's scathing and prescient at the same time. Lewis wasn't the first to point out the holes in the American dream but I don't think anyone's ever done it better.

Finally, John Steinbeck's 1939 masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath holds a place so near and dear to me I struggle to find words to describe what an important work it is. Most people are forced to read Grapes when they're in high school and that's unfortunate. Few 17 year olds have the life experience to appreciate what goes on between the covers of that novel. In some ways it picks up where Babbitt left off. The Grapes of Wrath is all about the dark underbelly of capitalism, and underbelly that's become vogue to ignore again. If you haven't read The Grapes of Wrath since high school, read it again. If you've never read, read it for the first time. Read it before the next election.

What about you? What book or books hold the title great in your world?

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As the day goes on, the rest of the participants in today's Blog Off will appear miraculously at the end of this post. Keep checking back and check out everybody's posts. You can follow along in Twitter as well, just look for the hashtag #LetsBlogOff. If you'd like more information about about the Blog Off or if you'd like to see the results of previous Blog Offs, you can find the main website here.

Help me help some people who need it

Photo: Edward Russell III

Finally, I got some news from Cat Island yesterday. The good news is that Hurricane Irene passed and no one died on the island. The bad news is that a place and a people who already had very little lost even that. Here's the front page of today's Nassau Guardian.

That's a large photo, click on it to see the whole thing. From the reports I'm getting, the headline in that newspaper couldn't be more true. Also from today's Guardian is an article reporting from the island itself. It doesn't sound very good, but Cat Islanders are a hardy lot and I don't doubt they will recover in time. In the short term however, the electricity and phone systems (which were always rudimentary) will be down for months. The massive flooding from the storm surge has fouled wells and ruined crops. The next six months will be difficult to say the least. I'd been planning to head to Cat Island for a vacation next month and in discussing it with my traveling companions, we're still going. Our vacation's been turned into a mission to help dig out and alleviate some misery but the prospect of being able to be of service for a week holds more appeal to me than lounging on a beach ever did. If you've ever been on a cruise through The Bahamas or been to an all-inclusive resort there you'd be surprised to learn that The Bahamas is very much a part of the developing world. Their national economy is completely dependent on tourism and maintaining that cash flow is priority one for the Bahamian government. As international aid starts to arrive in that country, it will be channeled into repairing the landscaping around Sandals in Exuma and the Atlantis on Paradise Island. What doesn't end up in the hands of the big resorts will be fixing the swimming pools of a variety of ministers in Nassau. Places like Cat Island, where there's no real tourism, will be the last in line for help after the first shipments of food and water stop. The only way around that is to give money, supplies and help to people there directly. One of the things I hope to accomplish there in a week and a half is to alleviate some of the hardship of the people of Cat Island. There's an orphanage on Cat, the Old Bight Mission Home. It's just down the road from the house where I stay and it provides a place to live and an education to ten orphaned kids. The husband and wife who run it are living saints. They'll need all sorts of things and I want to be able to lend a hand. The cultural life of Cat Islanders revolves around a handful of churches. It's those churches who will end up feeding everybody until things start to turn around. I want to be able to give them some money to help to do that. So, I am throwing $500 of my own money toward this effort. I'm turning to you guys to help me double that, at least, between now and when I leave on September 6th. I'm not at all used to asking for you to do more than click on the occasional link, but this is pretty important. So if you can help at all I know a whole bunch of people who'll be tremendously grateful. Give it some thought and thanks.

If that button doesn't work, click this link instead.

8/28 edited to add:

The Palm Beach Post just added this video to their website. It's an interview with two women who describe what it was like to live through the storm surge on Cat Island last week:

Storm comin'

Hurricane Irene is barreling toward The Bahamas right now.

If you click on that map the 2am track is connected to an M in a circle. M stands for Major Hurricane and that 2am track has Irene squarely between Exuma and Cat Island. A Major Hurricane is a category three or above.

I'm scheduled to go back to Cat Island in two weeks and if the airport's still there after tomorrow, we're still going. Instead of a vacation that'll have me perched here for six days,

My trip to Cat this time's going to become a humanitarian mission. That porch probably won't be there, but it's insured and will be rebuilt.

It's the non-expats of Cat Island we'll be going over to help.

When you're a typical Cat Islander, things like insurance are an unheard of luxury and when your house gets destroyed in a storm you live in a tent until you can raise enough cash to rebuild your home. In the meantime, you scrape by as best you can. That's who we'll be going to help.

The folks on the Carolina coast are going to get walloped by this storm this weekend and the damage there will be widespread. I'm not minimizing the the threat and trauma my fellow citizens are in for. But I can't help but worry more about a group of people I love who have so little already.

As soon as I get word about what's happened on Cat, I'm going to start raising money to help with relief efforts on Cat. You have been warned.

An intro to engineered wood floors

OK gang, my overview of engineered wood floors went live on Houzz.com the other day. Click on this slide show and it will take you to Houzz.com post haste.

When to Use Engineered Wood Floors

Houzz- Kitchen Remodel, Bathroom Remodel and More»

Browse Kids Products on Houzz- For Example:

Changing Tables · Toy Storage · Kids Dressers · Kids Toys · Kids Chairs · Highchairs · Children Lighting · Kids Decor ·

Meet the Miele Futura Series dishwashers

In early summer, Miele rolled out a new series of dishwashers in North America, the Futura Series. Miele bills the Futura Series as the "world's most intelligent dishwashers" and I'm inclined to believe them after I read through the specs.

Miele introduced cutlery trays to dishwashers 25 years ago, an industry first. In the Futura Series, the cutlery tray is adjustable and will allow a user to change the tray's configuration based on the different heights, depths and widths of the utensils being washed. So now large ladles, whisks and spatulas can fit in the tray. The cutlery tray's flexibility adds to the flexibility to the middle tray. The cutlery tray adjusts from side to side as well, to better accommodate tall objects in the center tray.

All of the trays in a Miele Futura Series dishwasher are adjustable and come complete with removable inserts, right and left fixed and foldable spikes, single section cup ranks, height adjustable glass holders, bottle holders, foldable glassware rails and stainless steel GlideGuard extension rails that allow the baskets to easily glide out and in.

Miele added four, 20-year, LED lights to the interiors of these dishwashers, making them better illuminated that any other brand on the market. As smart an innovation that is, it's when the dishwasher door is closed and the lights go dim inside that the real work these machines do kicks in. They automatically adjust water temperature, monitor room temperatures, drying times, rinse aid and more. This saves time as well as water and energy. All Futura dishwashers are Energy Star qualified. In fact, Miele exceeds 2012 Energy Star requirements by 25% for water consumption and the new Futura Series is 35% most efficient than previous generations.

The Futura Series Dishwashers have a manufacturer's suggested retail price that ranges from $1,249 to $2,849, depending on the model.

You can read more about Miele's dishwashers and other appliances on the Miele website. Check it out.