Bicycles are magical. Learning to ride one is a rite of passage. The bicycle wobbles between the thighs - yet stays upright. Suddenly, the world extends from the yard to the block, from the neighborhood to the city, and beyond.

This skill, once mastered, becomes intimately connected to memory, to knowledge. It's like riding a bicycle, we say to each other in our more difficult moments, bolstering ourselves against a lifetime of uncertainty. Once we learn, we never forget. Part human, part machine, on a bicycle we become a cyborg. Hunched forward, heads raised, we mimic the animals. Riding a bicycle is at once futuristic and also primordial: it's magical.

When I'm not bicycling, I like to read about bicycling. Paul Fournel's excellent and compact "Need for the Bike" is a perfect ode on the subject. Originally written in French, this book provides a new vocabulary, a new cast of characters.

When a faster cyclist passes us, washing us in his or her wake, the French call it "catching cold." Those of us who ride fixed-gear bicyclists are "squirrels." When we hit the wall, bonk, become drained of energy, the French say we've "met the man with the hammer." This man can strike at any time, and every cyclist knows him. When our bodies begin to fail, we become "wool eaters" (racers used to wear wool jerseys) or "wheel suckers," and we "pedal squares."

For a technical treatise, there is no better book than Frank J. Berto's coffee table sized "The Dancing Chain: History and Development of the Derailleur Bicycle." This amazing piece of scholarship traces the development of the bicycle from the very first velocipede (invented by Baron Karl von Drais in 1817) to the "ordinary" (the one with a huge front wheel) to the "safety" (from which all modern, chain-driven bicycles have sprung) via the evolution of a complicated gadget: the derailleur. The Dancing Chain is packed with pictures, original catalog drawings, biographical profiles, and technical know-how.

I believe that a good read is not only informative but an experience in and of itself. Tim Krabb*'s "The Rider" is a work of fiction. The main character, Tim Krabb*, races in a one-day classic, 150 kilometers in 150 pages. This clever conceit allows us to read in real time, but at a blistering pace, as the kilometers tick by with a flip of the page. I have been unable to find another book that captures what it must be like to race, the moments of nervous boredom punctuated by flashes of speed and decisive maneuvering. I finished it in one go, my hands sweaty, my breathing calibrated, and my legs spinning air.

The Tour de France is, of course, the major race of the season. It is the race where legends are made. Bicycle racing, due to its epic length and historic struggles, lends itself to its sublimation into print. Les Wooland's "The Unknown Tour de France" captures many of these legends and profiles a vast array of characters, from Maurice Garin, the tour's first winner, to Eddy "The Cannibal" Merckx, to Tommy Simpson, who died climbing Mount Ventoux, so high on amphetamines his feet never came out of his toe clips. The stories told here provide the essential tales of heroic triumphs and nail biting defeats before Lance Armstrong's historic seven tour wins. Discussions of drug use are not avoided, foreshadowing the tribulations that have defined this year's Tour.

All of these books can be found at the local public library. Also of interest are a vast array of travel guides, bicycling maps, DVDs, and other items. Please visit, we'd be more than happy to help find them.

Kreg Hasegawa is student librarian at the West Seattle Public Library, 661.4110.