On the book front, I just finished <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671894412/" title="Amazon page" class="book title">All The President's Men</a> by <span class="title">Washington Post</span> reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two men who developed and exposed the Watergate scandal.  It's a good piece of history come alive, and gives a good sense of just how corrupt some people can be behind facades of honesty.  It makes me scared of our current administration.  I rented <a href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0074119" title="IMDB: All the President's Men">the movie</a> from Blockbuster and watched half of it tonight; it stars Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, won <a href="http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/Movies/1976/All_The_Presidents_Men.asp" title="">several Academy Awards</a>, and was nominated for Best Picture.

Also, I should mention other books I'm reading like <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0815780958/" title="Amazon page" class="book title">Principles of Global Security</a> by John Steinbruner (informative but a real snoozer), the Chinese classic <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802130860/" title="Amazon page" class="book title">Monkey</a>, also known as <span class="book title">Journey to the West</span>, translated by by Arthur Waley.  I've been reading this one on my breaks at Borders, and from the beginning knew that this was a book I would want to bring home.  It's the story of a magical monkey with amazing powers that must accompany a priest and friends to India to retreive the Bhuddist scriptures, and how he beats up people along the way.  Horribly amusing, I can see how it's a favorite of Chinese kids.  The other book that I brought home from Border but haven't started yet is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1860469523/" title="Amazon page" class="book title">Haruki Murakami & the Music of Words</a>, by frequent Murakami translator Jay Rubin.  One Amazon reviewer says it's <q>part biography, part literary criticism</q>, maybe it will explain the weirdness of Murakami's books.  I'm looking forward to diving into this one.

Speaking of Murakami, he had a short story entitled <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fiction/030210fi_fiction" title="New Yorker page" class="story title">The Ice Man</a> in a recent issue of the <span class="magazine title">New Yorker</span>.  It was nice and cryptic, about a lady who meets the ice man, marries him and how they move to Antarctica.