WHAT WE'RE READING

We like to use Fridays for writing about things other than strictly REGJB stuff.
The ever growing pile of tomes by our bedside has led us to ponder the whether summer is really the time that the best books get released? We think that based on our purely unscientific survey, the Fall reading season is when the best books get released.

So what is Rumpole reading?

We are slogging our way through the Reagan Diaries. If you can get past the mundane musings about White House life, every now and then there are some little gems tucked away. Our biggest disappointment is that the diaries have not been edited with commentary. It would have been more helpful and the reading would be more enjoyable if an editor had added some comments on the specific individuals or events of the time when they are mentioned, sometimes just in a fleeting passing comment, in the diaries.

But speaking of enjoyable, any WWII history buff will fly through Agent Zigzag, by Ben Macintyre. Agent Zigzag is the true story of Eddie Chapman, a small time British thief, safe cracker, and adventurist, who while in prison on one of the outlying British Isles, finds himself under Nazi capture (yes, a few of the British Isles were captured briefly by Germany in WWII). Chapman becomes a spy for the German Reich, and upon parachuting back into Britain, promptly becomes one of England's most successful and important double agents.





And speaking of mundane musings, Alan Greenspan's new biography The Age Of Turbulence is similarly possessed of small fed-speak tidbits wrapped around some astounding observations about past US policy and a wonderful chapter on the future economy. You ignore Mr. Greenspan's predictions at your own peril. Another great book requiring a commitment to spending a large amount of time to digest the material.




Author Dennis Johnson gives us his first novel in more than a decade, and it is an ambitious one, in Tree Of Smoke, a twisted labyrinth of a story centering around CIA Officer Skip Sands who is sent to Vietnam in 1967. A large book well worth the required investment of time and energy to digest a wonderful but scattered tale of Vietnam and beyond.

And to steal from Jay Leno, the other night he noted that this is National Book Month. While authors are going around the country expounding on the joys of reading, President Bush has asked for network time to give the rebuttal.

Only if you must: If you're the type of "wonky" guy that spends your weekend reading about federal sentencing, and we're not casting any labels
HERE
then the Denver University Law Review
HERE has several articles on the Booker/Rita advisory guideline sentencing line of cases. But only if you just can't find anything better to do this fantastic fall weekend.