[Welcome to our newest little Quickie column/editorial/ whatever. The basic idea with "No Sound" will be to get cool music-and-other- things-type people to talk not about music, for once, but instead about the written word, in general. This month we asked Jon Solomon, the brain behind ultra-indie record label My Pal God Records -- home of such disparate (and cool) bands as Paul Newman, Drums and Tuba, We Ragazzi, and Joel RL Phelps' Downer Trio -- for the five most interesting things he's read lately. Here goes...]

In no particular order:

1. Jackie Robinson: A Biography, by Arnold Rampersad
Amazingly thorough and well-researched story of Jackie Robinson's entire life, not just his struggle to make the Brooklyn Dodgers and break baseball's color barrier.
BUY ME:

2. "The Outsiders," by Pamela Colloff, from Texas Monthly (November 1999)
[http://www.texasmonthly.com/mag/1999/nov/outsiders.html]
The true story of the death of an Amarillo, TX, punk teenager named Brian Deneke, run over by a car in a fight between "punks and jocks" in the winter of 1997. This story discusses the effect Brian's death has had on Amarillo. Heartbreaking.

3. Rantsylvania.com FAQ, by Scott Keith
[http://www.rantsylvania.com/home/rspwfaq/prelude.asp]
The best introduction to professional wrestling (and how it works) that the Internet has to offer. Forwarded to friends hundreds of times in attempts to bring them up to speed on why this "sport" consumes so much of my free time.

4. Ghost World, by Dan Clowes
A graphic novel, sure, but told with such painstaking starkness that it has haunted me for years. Not to mention that the hardcover version of Ghost World is such a beautiful tribute to the attention to detail.
BUY ME:

5. The Best American Sports Writing 1999, edited by Richard Ford
Ninth edition of this annual series of acclaimed writing on sport from a variety of well-known and less prominent sources. This book series is a gift from my parents every Hannukah, and even though I know it is coming each December, I look forward to it with glee.

BUY ME:

HONORABLE MENTIONS THAT I JUST THOUGHT OF:
-- Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crocket Johnson
-- Nearly all of Herge's Tintin books.

Jon Solomon
Chicago, IL