Beverages

This past weekend in Providence, I ate in the basement of Apsara, surrounded by friends and a modest selection of beverages. I don't particularly enjoy consumption per se, but I love having a wide variety of beverages--preferably at least four of five of them--arrayed at my fingertips. BYOB restaurants like Apsara are the perfect venues to satisfy this urge, as I can set up my hoard of beverages, in quasi-feudal style, wherever I please, and in ridiculous quantities. In an ideal world, I would prefer to have before me not four or five but rather dozens of types of beverages, particularly the following:

• Tap water, with ice, in a plastic cup, preferably poured from a pitcher (for ease of refill).
• Hot green tea, poured from a pot, in a small porcelain cup.
• Coke (not Pepsi), with ice and a slice of lime or lemon, in a plastic cup.
• Iced coffee, with ice and milk, in a pint glass, with a straw.
• Orange juice, no pulp, with ice, in a large glass.
• Inexpensive, and preferably regional, lager beer, such as Yuengling or Narragansett, from a pint can.
• Imported beer, variety depending on mood and season, from a pint glass.
• Red wine, in the $15-$30/bottle range, from a wine glass.
• Hot coffee, nearly black with a drop of whole milk, in a mug.
• Syrupy, cognac-based liqueur, from the bottle.
• Inexpensive bottled water, chilled, from the bottle.
• Orange Vitamin Water, from the bottle.

Michael Nutter

In my life, I've made campaign contributions to just three candidates: Paul Wellstone, David Segal, and Michael Nutter. After this Tuesday's election, Nutter is now set to become the next mayor of Philadelphia. He polled strongly in the white liberal enclaves of Chestnut Hill, Mt. Airy, and my office, but he also crushed Chaka Fattah in West Philly. Whether or not he'll be able to make a dent in Philly's current problems is another matter.

By the numb3rs

Last May, I set a goal: Henceforth, I would read about 30 to 45 books per year, or 10 to 15 per "season" -- the three seasons in my system being January through April (Spring), May through August (Summer), and September through December (Fall). Over the past year, I kept a list of books read, along with pertinent information about each book:

2006-2007 STATISTICS

Total books read: 41 (14 in Summer 2006/16 in Fall 2006/11 in Spring 2007)
Books read per month: 3.42
Books read per week: 0.79
Books read by category:
Literature: 9 (4/2/3)
History: 7 (2/2/3)
Theory and Criticism: 7 (1/3/3)
Misc. Nonfiction: 6 (1/4/1)
Political Science: 4 (1/3/0)
Urban Studies: 4 (2/2/0)
Genre Fiction: 4 (3/0/1)
Books read by publisher:
All trade and non-UP academic: 27 (13/6/8)
All university press: 14 (1/10/3)
Penguin: 6
Vintage: 5
Penn Press: 5
Norton: 3
Chicago: 3
Cornell: 2
Random House: 1
Pelican: 1
Harper & Row: 1
Mariner: 1
Viking: 1
Verso: 1
Knopf: 1
Westview: 1
Modern Library: 1
New Directions: 1
Ace: 1
Continuum: 1
Monthly Review: 1
Princeton: 1
Yale: 1
Harvard: 1
MIT: 1
Books read by binding:
Cloth: 15 (36.59%, 3/8/4)
Paperback: 26 (63.41%, 11/8/7)
Duration in possession before read:
Less than one month: 30 (7/14/9)
One month to six months: 5 (3/0/2)
Six months to one year: 1 (1/0/0)
More than one year: 5 (3/2/0)

There's something pleasing about rendering reading in terms of numbers and categories. To be sure, part of the pleasure comes from violating the unspoken taboo against treating reading as a quantifiable activitity (Full disclosure: Moneyball was one of the 41 books I read last year). But making this list also helped me reflect on what I've read, and why, and how my reading habits are changing over time.