Review: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 by Mark Twain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Twain at his short essay best. This volume of the autobiography has Twain dictating whatever stories came into his mind while purportedly writing his autobiography over three years of his life. It comes across a lot like a newspaper columnist with free reign to write whatever he wants, knowing the strength of his style and his storytelling capabilities will pull him through with what could well be a gem. There are lots of gems here.

The backstory here is very interesting, and Twain himself tells it near the end of this volume. Throughout this and previous volumes of his autobiography, Twain complains about how the copyright law was taking away the ability for his family to earn revenue off of his work, his writing, after the copyright has expired. He explains in this volume that he wants to provide for daughter Jean. His other living daughter has married and is provided for, but Jean is not. Twain’s way to game the copyright law is to write additions to his autobiography, and to have his daughter release new versions of the autobiography when the copyright is nearing expiration, each new edition containing a few thousand words from this volume of stories. Quite a smart idea. But the bulk of the volume ends when Twain finds his daughter Jean dead, having drowned after an epileptic seizure. He shares his grief in his last dictated sections, his reason for writing the autobiography gone.

There is an addition to the “official” part of the autobiography. In subsequent years, Twain realized that his secretary and his housekeeper had been defrauding him. He writes a story to describe the situation, covering quite a few pages, in the same style and wit he exhibits throughout. The case never went to court, so this story was not released. It contains some interesting details on his life, his finances, and his frame of mind. He was too trusting, and you can feel him just kicking himself on being taken for so long by the people he mindlessly trusted. You learn much of Twain’s character at the twilight of his life from this story.

The essays, or stories themselves are of a wide variety of topics, but all containing Twain wit and style. There are descriptions of investments, including a wireless telephone that takes messages. Twain had a great disdain for President Teddy Roosevelt, pillorying him in a few of his essays. He also took on the media. The writing was fresh, but I found it truly amazing that for a few pages, I would have believed it had been written this week – the topics were how unpresidential the President was acting, followed by a condemnation of the media, printing stories without facts in order to keep advertisers happy. Ripped from today’s headlines, but written 110 years ago!

After listening to the audiobook version of all three volumes of Twain’s autobiography, I got what I was initially looking for – insight into Twain, and a lot of stories told in his style. He was a great writer, and this volume reminds you of this in every section.


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Review: The End the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving

The End the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving by Leigh Gallagher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It seems like I’ve read a lot of these kinds of books, of the genre I will label “pop-urban planning”. Most all have taken a thesis and provided convincing arguments that their thesis is correct. This is of the kind, and takes the popular pro-urbanization tact. In this case, pro-urbanization is anti-suburb, at least in the title and most of the rhetoric. Yet the author also includes anecdotes that describe possible paths forward for those suburbs, including high-density faux urban centers. I’m seeing that in the suburb I live in, with highrise mixed use developments replacing the empty one-story retail centers within 2 blocks of our commuter train station. The dream is a suburban lifestyle without required car ownership, and that seems possible in many places with mixtures of commercial and residential land uses -- just like the big city. I dislike this book’s title, because that is not the entire story revealed in the book. Suburbs aren’t ending, but are, and will continue to be, reconceptualized and rebuilt to meet the changing needs of the population. I found this a good book to bring up some of the issues and the opportunities in suburban development, with good anecdotes illustrating the authors investigations. The answer I saw here wasn’t just flight back to city center, but rebuilding a “change-urb”.

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Review: American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus

American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus by Lisa Wade
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The author began the book with a discussion of the actual statistics of hooking up. It’s nowhere near as prevalent as the media and as the millennials you know lead on. After that brief introduction, the author spends the rest of the book describing the activities of her students, many active in hookups, but most impacted by what the author calls “the culture” surrounding the hookup. In other words, there are lots of hunters but few kills, and most brag of trophies. The bragging is the purpose. I’ve read books including “Missoula”, by Jon Krakauer, that shed light on this culture. “American Hookup” starts there, but doesn’t dwell on rape and justice. This book adds some details and anecdotes but shows the state of “the hunt” and the issues those ways cause still exist. Think less romance, more process, more checklists to mark off. It doesn’t seem to be about sexual freedom, like the stereotype of the mores of the sixties. My biggest takeaway from “Missoula” was that many young men have not generated their own moral compass when it comes to respect of others, or even “the golden rule”. From “American Hookup”, I see that that can be said of the young women the author has taken stories from as well. Parental and societal fails abound.

But does this represent a failure? For those in the older generations, changes in mores compared to the beliefs you were raised with generally appear to be failures. But progress also can seem like a failure at first blush. Is this progress? The author presents enough stories with no real benefit for the parties involved, in fact portraying injury and loss in some cases, to imply that this part of modern culture isn’t what you’d call progress. Overall, enlightening to a point.


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Review: I Killed Pink Floyd's Pig: Inside Stories of Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll

I Killed Pink Floyd's Pig: Inside Stories of Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll by Beau Phillips
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve always wondered what radio promoters do. It seemed like quite a life, hanging out with creative musicians, hustling the details of deals, seeing where the money goes. And this book shows that it’s what I was thinking, and more. There are plenty of stories of the author’s time working promotions and other jobs at a rock station in Seattle and later at VH-1. From the stories, I’m not sure if the national spotlight would be considered the big league – it seems the local radio stories are just as cool and interesting, if not better. Lots of band name-dropping and stories about the ones you know. Most show the wild side of rock. The best, in my estimation, were the ones that showed the humanity in rock, the stories about Eric Clapton and the Make-a-Wish story with Paul McCartney. Another favorite – the everyone-gets-a-tux Tom Petty concert. From a business perspective, this gives some great ideas for promoting products, or in this case stations. And it gives examples of failures as well – always check that you’ve got the right album name before printing thousands of buttons. But it’s best for the stories about the big rock acts over the past 30 years. The author mixes stories about things he did with stories about things he’s seen, and that’s a great combination here.

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Review: A Barista Spills the Beans: A Dark Roasted Tale About My Time At Starbucks

A Barista Spills the Beans: A Dark Roasted Tale About My Time At Starbucks by P.N.M.I. Jameson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This isn’t “How Starbucks Saved My Life”, the rise from the ashes book by Michael Gill. The author clearly states it isn’t in the beginning of her book on working for a Starbucks in a tony part of MSP. But I don’t know about that. These books were cut from the same cloth, so to speak. Both are fish out of water stories, but that mostly revolved around being older than the normal Starbucks worker. While Gill is trying to figure out a new way after a late career layoff, Jameson describes herself in a way saying this is just another in a long progression of similar jobs, this one promising health insurance. And Gill uses his Starbucks experience to learn about himself through friendships with his co-workers and through repeated and monotonous job processes, Jameson actually does the same. Although, once again, she doesn’t admit this. By the end of the book, she has learned a bit about herself. Her detailed, humorous descriptions of her co-workers are the bulk of the book, and she has cataloged them well. There were way too many co-workers over the summer Jameson documented to keep track of them all. I blame store location and management and the fickleness of many young denizens of barista nation. And so does she. In reaching a similar age as the author, I have thought of becoming a semi-retired barista, but this is yet another book that dissuades me from the world that shows the job as an awful lot of work for often questionable management. Jameson starts her story describing her prior job in a gift store for older ladies. I found this to be very funny. Jameson tells stories well, but she has a voice, or more an attitude, that can rub the reader wrong at times. It comes across as very real, and on the whole I enjoyed her story. I would read more by Jameson.

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Review: The Jealous Kind

The Jealous Kind by James Lee Burke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While this James Lee Burke story revolves around a high school kid in the early 50s in Texas, it is no less serious than one of his Robicheaux stories. And the word serious could be capitalized here. The teen, Aaron Broussard, gets involved in theft, murder, suicide, terror, insanity, the mob, hitmen, Nazis and old spies, multiple gangs of bad guys, a lost million dollars, and a pretty girl. Or two. It was kind of like a story of a teen aged Robicheaux, with a goofy best friend ala Clete Purcell, getting into the same kinds of messes that Robicheaux routinely got into in his stories, but with a teen’s way of looking at things. The seriousness was a bit overwrought for the story, I thought. The story had a few too many parts to the plot that didn’t add much. And this wasn’t as moody as Robicheaux stories, mainly because 1950s Houston isn’t as much of a character as New Orleans and rural Louisiana. Burke’s other mysteries include the location as a kind of character, but here the location didn’t matter much to the story. Without the mention of icehouses and rodeos, this could have been about anywhere else. Looking forward to Burke’s next one.

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Review: A Gift to My Children: A Father's Lessons for Life and Investing

A Gift to My Children: A Father's Lessons for Life and Investing by Jim Rogers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The famous investor wrote this book to share his life advice with his young daughter. There is another review on Goodreads that outlines Rogers’ advice, and that is a large majority of what he has written. What isn’t on that list but is in the book?
- Rogers’ repeated commentary relating his infatuation with China.
- Some stories about his upbringing that are interesting in a homespun way.
- More love of China.
I would love to see what Rogers would have written now, 11 years after the initial publication, after having lived in China. I wonder if the infatuation is still there, and if the investing advice to his daughter, high on China and Brazil, continues or has been modified. The investing advice in particular seemed of its time.

Overall, enjoyable for the guidance given to Rogers’ daughter, with anecdotes as well as investing advice mixed in with the life advice.


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