I got a preview copy of David Bryne’s new book, Bicycle Diaries. Byrne of Talking Heads fame started using a bike to get around New York City in the 80s. Before long, he started toting a folding bike around while touring. “I discovered that zipping from one place to another by bike was amazingly fast and efficient,” Byrne writes in the introduction. “I felt more connected to the life on the streets.”

Byrne’s writes about these connections in Bicycle Diaries as he makes observations about the values, economics and hopes that he sees in a town’s stores, museums, temples, and office buildings. This isn’t a book about bicycling, per se, but it’s about the parts of a city you see while riding a bicycle.

I’ve just started reading it and I like it. I’ll have a further review when the book is released on September 21.

David Byrne will be in San Francisco at the Herbst Theater for a book signing on Tuesday, September 29 at 8 PM.

Joe Friel’s The Cyclist’s Training Bible is the book to get if you want to get better, faster and stronger on the bike.

More details: The Cyclist’s Training Bible. Author Joe Friel has a blog.

My morning commute reading this week is The Bourne Sanction by Eric van Lustbader.

I was kind of a fan of Robert Ludlum and the first couple of Jason Bourne books. Sanction is kind of meh — there’s a power struggle between the U.S. military and the CIA that only Bourne can defuse and an Islamo-Nazi (!) terrorist scheme that only Bourne can stop. Bourne can turn any object into a weapon, leap tall buildings, dodge speeding bullets and even ward off the effects of tranquilizing darts with chocolate bars, but he’s unable to ride a bicycle through DC city traffic.

Jason Bourne is chasing The Bad Guys when he takes a bike from a gutter bunny and runs red lights to catch up to his quarry.

Bourne was able to make good headway, as the GMC had been slowed by the sludgy traffic. Just as he neared the light he saw the GMC take off and knew he had been spotted. The problem with a bicycle, especially one that had caused a minor uproar lunging through a red light, was that the cyclist became conspicuous.

Bourne threw caution to the wind, following the accelerating GMC into the fork as it took Pennsylvania Avenue. Swerving in and out between vehicles, he put on another burst of speed. Just as he was coming abreast of the far crosswalk, a gaggle of drunk teenagers tumbled off the curb on their way across the avenue. They closed off the lane behind the GMC.

Bourne swerves to avoid the teenagers, hits the curb and endos into a crowd on the sidewalk.

Bourne’s mistake: He aimed for the sidewalk. He clearly should have taken the lane directly behind the GMC.

Van Lustbader’s storytelling, dialog and plot are all pretty weak, but his word pictures are superb, engaging all of my senses through his prose.

Amazon: Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Sanction

I’m reading Robert Hurst’s latest book The Cyclist’s Manifesto. In Chapter 2 on the history of cycling, Hurst writes about the hundreds of bike factories, suppliers and dealers that went out of business in the late 1890s after automobiles started becoming popular. An entire industry — the industry that laid the foundation for automobile mass production with the development of tooling, production techniques, machining expertise, and even little things like ball bearings, gears and pneumatic tires — was annihilated with the coming of cars.

There was no Federal bailout back then, so many factories were “destroyed by suspicious fires” in apparent insurance fraud. Writes Hurst:

Attempting to unload one’s toxic financial obligations unto other parties has become a convention of American culture. You’ve got to feel for the SUV dealers, in an era of high-tech fire protection systems and masterful inspectors. Will the dealers get a spot at the bailout trough alongside the manufacturers? Keep an eye out for ‘eco-terrorists.“

The Cyclist’s Manifesto available now. Hurst’s writing is always fun and informative.

Today’s giveaway is the Bike To Work Guide: Save Gas, Go Green, Get Fit by cyclists Roni Sarig and Paul Dorn. The copy I’m awarding is my slightly dog-eared and marked up review copy of the book.

You might recognize Paul Dorn as the author of the popular Bike Commute Tips blog and his excellent Bike Commuting Tips web resource. Paul is a long time transportational cyclist and a League of American Bicyclists Cycling Instructor who was involved in the early days of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition as a board member. Later, he served as executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition. Today, Paul bikes to work in the Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Community of Davis, California. Paul and I exchange emails frequently as we argue about the importance of vehicular cycling education, but I consider him a friend and a great ally in promoting cyclist rights on the road.

The Bike To Work Guide began as a revision of Roni Sarig’s The Everything Bicycle Book. In this edition for the bike commuter, Paul contributes his expertise gained from his years of experience commuting by bike. The book is targeted for the beginner with little cycling experience as it steps him or her through the process of selecting a bike (avoid the local discount mart, he says), choosing the right gear, route finding, riding safely in traffic, parking your bike at the office, and cleaning up once you get there.

The prose is spare and to the point. Sure, you could read all of this stuff on the web, but this printed little handbook is convenient and easy to carry around. It’s not quite pocket sized, but it fits well in a purse or manpurse. If you have a friend who would like to start commuting to work by bike, this guide makes a good gift.

Keenan in Crestview, Florida is the winner! 50 people entered the drawing via Twitter. I used the random number generator at random.org, which spit out the magic number “8.”

To win: I’m doing this giveaway a little differently from my previous giveaways. I’ll select a winner at random from everybody who enters between the time I post this and noon Pacific Time on Thursday, January 15.

To enter: Send a tweet by clicking this link with the text “Bike To Work Guide Giveaway http://www.cyclelicio.us/ #bikebook” to Twitter. I won’t check super carefully, but if I notice more than one entry from a single person I’ll disqualify that entry. The usual contest rules and limitations apply. Remember: this is a used copy of the book, so no complaints about the condition!