If you own a mountain bike and don’t intend for every last bit of its maintenance to be handled by your local bike shop, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Lennard Zinn’s Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. In terms of “A-ha!” moments, to say nothing of damage likely spared to your components by the avoidance of stupid mistakes, it will pay for itself in a matter of hours.
It’s not just that Zinn’s explanations are detailed and his prose lucid, or that Todd Telander’s many excellent illustrations shed further light upon the subject, though all of these things are true. It also that pretty much every page makes clear how much Zinn loves the subject; how much of its lore he has absorbed over the years, to the point where understanding seems to seep from his very pores.
Orson Scott Card wrote that “the Maker is a part of what he makes.” Reading Zinn’s book, and surveying his handiwork, one glimpses just what that might mean in the real world.