Author Archives: Levi Muller

Feb 14 2011

Sonny Barger’s Books

Sonny Barger

For those of you who don’t know, Sonny Barger is an American Legend. Opinions vary on if he’s a good or bad legend, but there’s no doubt that he’s a legend. Sonny is most known for being a Hell’s Angel. He’s not just a Hell’s Angel, he’s the Hell’s Angel. However, he’s also an author and an expert on motorcycles and riding. I’ve recently read 5 of his books and loved each of them.

Hell’s Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club is an autobiography that gets you behind the doors of the life of an infamous biker and the most famous motorcycle club in the world. There are two sides to every coin and at least as many to every event. This book does a great job of sharing his side.

Freedom: Credos from the Road is less about the events in Sonny’s life and more about what he stands for. Freedom is a term used by many people, often with different meanings. Here you’ll learn what it means to him.

Ridin’ High Livin’ Free is a collection of stories from motorcycle riders around the world. While I doubt they’re all truly factual, the stories are still fun to read.

Let’s Ride: Sonny Barger’s Guide to Motorcycling – is where I started reading Sonny’s work. This book covers many good-to-know things about motorcycles and riding. This book answered a lot of questions I didn’t know I would have about riding.

Dead in 5 Heartbeats is the only piece of cover-to-cover fiction from this list. I say that because some of the previous titles may have included a few tall tales. This book is about a man, not so different from Sonny Barger, as he tries to leave the 1% MC culture he was so much a part of in the past, only to get reeled back in under unfortunate circumstances.

If you like motorcycles or are curious about the culture within an outlaw motorcycle club I recommend checking out Sonny’s books. They’ll give you a perspective that popular documentaries and other media won’t show you.

 

Feb 14 2011

2010 Book Bawk Year in Review

I read 38 books last year. I didn’t make my goal of a book per week, but I’m still pretty proud of 38. Reading is still my biggest hobby. It might not always be the one I enjoy the most, but it is the one that I spend the most time with and the one that I keep coming back to .

At the start of the year, I finished off the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I recommend these books to anyone who enjoys Greek Mythology. The books offer a different approach to learning about the myths. They might not all be correct, but the books make learning about the myths fun. After Percy, I quickly read a couple of non-fiction books that I would recommend to most people. Around this same time, I created Book Bawk and wrote posts about them. You may find them here (Linchpin and Crush It).

In March, I started reading one of my favorite series, Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Since reading this series, I’ve convinced my wife, brother, mother, and father-in-law to read the series and they all loved it. Around the same time, I read On Writing and Blockade Billy by Stephen King. On Writing should be required reading for anyone who is interested in writing novels or even writing blogs. At the end of the month, I was welcomed to the world of Stieg Larsson and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I enjoyed The Millennium Series, but sadly only read the first book. I turned to the films for the rest of Lisbeth’s adventures.

In the late spring, I got hooked on Star Wars again. It happens from time to time, but this time it included the Star Wars books. I really enjoyed Drew Karpyshyn’s books about Darth Bane (start with Path of Destruction). I also read an amazing classic novel that I wrote about HERE. I’m happy to see that many schools add Alas, Babylon to their reading lists. Once my passion for Star Wars diminished, I got back into the Narnia books by the master, C.S. Lewis. I wrote a post about my adventures in Narnia HERE. From there, my excitement for Norse Mythology was re-kindled while I read a great book by Kevin Crossley-Holland and jumped into The Sea of Trolls.

In the Summer, I finally got around to reading Donald Miller and I’m forever changed because of his writing. He writes a bit of Christian non-fiction, but it’s not preachy. I posted an article about how he can change a person’s life.  I also found the value of Trust Agents thanks to Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. I read a bit more on Mythology thanks to Edith Hamilton and found Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde after it had sat on my to-read list for many years. Thank you Robert Lewis Stevenson for this masterpiece.

The slowdown in reading during the summer came with a general stoppage of writing in the fall and winter. I apologize for letting this blog go stagnant.

With the changing leaves in the fall came a resurrection of my passion for motorcycles. I still don’t own one, but I am ever so much closer and have a plan to rectify the situation. This passion for motorcycles was present in my choices of literature for the fall and winter as well. I really got into Sonny Barger‘s books. I read Let’s Ride, Hell’s Angel, Freedom, Ridin’ High Livin’ Free, and Dead in 5 Heartbeats (the only fictional one). I’ll recommend these books to anyone who loves motorcycles or the motorcycle club culture. I also picked up a book titled Shop Class as Soulcraft. It was an amazing book about philosophy that really got me thinking differently about life and my choice of careers. Pick up this book, but be warned that you may spend a few hours re-evaluating a lot of things in your life while reading it.

2011 made it here in a blur and I have yet to complete an entire book. Currently I am in the process of finishing 7 different titles. This means I’ll probably never finish a few of them. Here’s what’s on my iPad now, The 4-Hour Work Week, Enter the Kettlebell!, Neuromancer, Riders of the Purple Sage, In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks, The Land of the Silver Apples, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I’ll probably finish the 4-Hour Work Week first and pick up the 4-Hour Body because I am really enjoying the teachings of Tim Ferriss. He was recommended to me by the CEO of Tupperware Brands and I’m more than happy with his pick.

I’ll end this post with the blog’s stats, because they are the most boring (except to me). We finished the year with 2,425 views to our site. Our busiest day was April 19th, were we had 75 views. Most of them were for our most popular post, which was Favorite Books of Celebrities. The post had 456 views last year, thanks to being mentioned on NataliePortman.com. Thank you to everyone who read our blog in the past and to all of you who are reading it now. Without an audience, we’d simply be a journal.

Oct 28 2010

Share content on your Kindle

The Business Insider has reported:

Amazon will add a neat new feature to its Kindle e-book program later this year, designed to let you loan Kindle e-books to your friends, either via Kindle devices or the Kindle app for the iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.

…”Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period,” Amazon explains.

And perhaps more importantly, publishers will also be able to turn lending off for their books.

I hope that the publishers don’t use the off button for their books. This new development from Amazon is amazing and solves an issue that I had with the device. Now my wife and I can each have a Kindle and share books, like we did with printed versions of them.

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-will-let-you-loan-kindle-books-to-a-friend-but-publishers-can-turn-it-off-2010-10

Sep 29 2010

Books Are For Girls

Most of the men I know don’t read, especially fiction. I think it’s a shame, but it’s their choice. I’m noticing that it’s not just the men that I know. The popular novels of 2010 are mostly written by women and their main characters are women. A recent look on some popular lists on GoodReads.com shows us the proof.

In the Top 100 Most Popular Books of 2010, 74% of them were written by women. Are women better writers or are the men simply not interested in writing? Are there more female authors? Maybe women read more than men and vote on their favorite books more than men and the popular vote shows it. It could be many different factors.

Let’s keep looking at this list of popular titles. Mockingjay was the most popular book. It was written by a woman and the story focuses on a girl named Katniss Everdeen. I loved the story, but I don’t think that I am Suzanne Collins‘ target audience. The next most popular is a Twilight book, again focusing on a female character. After that, a Sookie Stackhouse book. I think there’s a trend here. These are not only books about girls written by women, but they are each from an extremely popular series of books written by women about female characters. Of the Top 100, it seems that 56% of them are centered on female characters. Of course, this number could be much higher or a little lower, since I haven’t read all 100 of the most popular for 2010.

All of this leads me to the title of the article, Books Are For Girls. Are they really? Of course not, but it’s beginning to look that way. I won’t go into my theory of how women will be the dominant sex for the foreseeable future (since it’s based on only a handful of facts), but I want to let people know that the lack of reading by men is a contributing factor to the sex’s decline in established countries like the United States. However, I’m a man who’s going to keep reading as long as my eyes and brain allow me to do so.

Please share your thoughts on this subject in the comments below.

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Sep 10 2010

Eragon Update

Eragon cover from Sweden

Eragon cover from Sweden

Lately, a good percentage of traffic to this site has come from people looking for information on Eragon or the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini.

I must admit that our site is nowhere near as knowledgeable in all things Inheritance as Shurtugal.com. They are dedicated to following Paolini and do an amazing job.

With that being said, here is some of what I learned from their site:

1. Eragon Book 4 doesn’t have a title, cover, or release date yet.

2. Christopher Paolini gave an interview at Comic Con, but didn’t give any clue to the real questions people want answered.

3. Christopher Paolini attended the Boy Scouts 100th Jamboree and held a Q&A session revealing that he has picked a title for the book already, he doesn’t know when it will be released because he is still writing it, but he’s nearing completion, the cover will have a green dragon on it, he’s outlined some more books to write after he’s finished with book 4, and some of the books may take place in Inheritance Cycle’s world of Alagaesia.

4. In Book 4, Eragon is captured (presumably) and tortured. This may also be taking place near the end of the book.

For the most part, we are still waiting on Paolini with the rest of you, hoping that the new book and the end of the series will be worth the wait.

Sep 8 2010

100 Books That Transformed The World

The people at Penguin Books are bringing us some great ideas with their new mini-site called Great Ideas. The site showcases books that have changed the way people think about the world. Penguin says,

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.

Their list of 100 books that have changed the world starts with the following 20 thought provokers:
01. Seneca – On the Shortness of Life
02. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
03. St Augustine – Confessions of a Sinner
04. Thomas à Kempis – The Inner Life
05. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince
06. Michel de Montaigne – On Friendship
07. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub
08. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – The Social Contract
09. Edward Gibbon – The Christians and the Fall of Rome
10. Thomas Paine – Common Sense
11. Mary Wollstonecraft – A Vindication of the Rights of Women
12. William Hazlitt – On the Pleasure of Hating
13. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – The Communist Manifesto
14. Arthur Schopenhauer – On the Suffering of the World
15. John Ruskin – On Art and Life
16. Charles Darwin - On Natural Selection
17. Friedrich Nietzsche – Why I Am So Wise
18. Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own
19. Sigmund Freud – Civilization and its Discontents
20. George Orwell - Why I Write

View the entire list of 100 Books That Transformed The World.

Sep 3 2010

Participatory Writing – The Mongoliad

How would you like to influence decisions made by characters in a novel? The Mongoliad is a thirteenth century fantasy novel that allows readers to take part in the writing with its authors. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure type concept for today’s socially networked world. Or, maybe you could think of it as a fantasy story built by Wikipedia.

The Mongoliad

Not only will The Mongoliad be creative in the way the story is created, but it will also offer videos, images, and music to go with the story, creating a rich environment.

We might be witnessing the art of storytelling evolve.

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Aug 24 2010

Suzanne Collins reads from the first pages of MOCKINGJAY

This is the first official sneak peek of MOCKINGJAY. And remember, friends don’t let friends share spoilers!

MOCKINGJAY is available wherever books are sold on August 24, 2010. To test your Hunger Games knowledge, visit the official Hunger Games site http://www.scholastic.com/hungergames and join the community on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/thehungergames !

Aug 18 2010

Don Miller is … a life changer?

Blue Like Jazz

Blue Like Jazz

A few years ago I was doing some research on religion and I was trying see how it fit in my life. I was raised as a Catholic, but considered myself a cafeteria Christian in that I was taking and leaving practices as I found fit. I’m still proudly doing that today.

A friend of mine pointed me toward a book by Donald Miller called Blue Like Jazz: Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. It took me too long to actually check the book out from my public library, but I eventually read it. The book was a easy-reading memoir showing a man’s journey into understanding God. It was fun to read, but it didn’t make my top 10 of favorites. One of the better quotes from the book read,

“My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don’t really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn’t exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter, and honestly I don’t care.”

I instantly related to Don Miller when he wrote about how his friends that deemed themselves more religious were acting the least like Jesus. I’ve been feeling this way for almost 10 years now, with a few clear exceptions of course. These religious friends of mine seem very hateful toward people who aren’t like them. They dislike most people who are gay, non-Christian, of a different race, or even a different political preference. Their hatred is most definitely not like the Jesus I know or they “follow”.

This is not a post about religion, so let me please beg your pardon for the previous paragraph, although I’m leaving it as part of the post.

After I finished Blue Like Jazz, I sent my friend a note thanking him for the suggestion. He promptly replied, saying that I need to read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, also by Donald Miller. He followed by saying that the book changed his life. Before I continue I must say that my friend Matt is not an overly dramatic person. Since he said that it changed his life, the book had to be great.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

I first read the first 3 chapters of the book online. I had to admit that it was pretty good, a story about looking at your life differently. I looked in my library, but the books were all checked out. It was a book that seemed to call me, so I asked my wife to stop by the bookstore on her way home and buy it. It was a great decision. This book has many great quotable lines. I didn’t highlight them, but wrote them down in my journal as I feel that I will be sharing this book and want others to experience it without my opinion of what the best lines were. However, I’m about to share some with you. Skip to the end if you don’t want to be tainted. =)

Some of the lines I liked:

“In a way, I’d started a new story about trying to find a story, and so I didn’t need to escape my boring life anymore.”

“People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen.”

“Where there is an absence of story, or perhaps a bad story, a good storyteller walks in and changes reality. He doesn’t critique the existing story, or lament about his boredom, like a critic. He just tells something different and invites other people into thew new story he is telling.”

His words are not completely profound, but definitely thought provoking. I’ve since started following @donmilleris and his friend @bobgoff. They’re great guys who are living great stories and sharing them with us. Since reading Don’s books, I have a different perception of life. Whether I choose to do the work and allow it to change my life is to be determined, but it has the potential to be a life changer, just as my friend suggested.

5 of 5 Stars

Aug 10 2010

An Idea for Teachers

Here’s an idea for teachers to leverage technology in the classroom while getting kids to read.

Have each student pick an author and a book by that author to write about. Then, tell them to use their new-found knowledge to create a blog for that author. The first fun task in creating the blog will be the development of the blog’s name, like “The Throne Room” for a blog about Stephen KING. The blog should include an About page with information regarding the life of the author, a bibliography page with a list of the author’s work, and a page dedicated to quotes from the author’s work. The first post for the bog should be the student’s review of the book they chose by that author. As a side project, they may be able to get some extra credit later in the year for adding additional posts about other books by the author.