Review: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter by Margareta Magnusson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I expected this to be more of a how-to book than it ended up being. Magnusson mostly tells stories of her life, and of the times she’s had to clean up the houses of people, mostly relatives, that had passed away. Through her often funny stories, I was reminded of the times when my Mother was responsible for her Mother’s house after she passed. I saw the angst, and although it was decades ago, I still remember the weight of the decisions of what to do with every item in the house. Magnusson captures the issue cause by those weighty decisions, and suggests, in persuasive ways like a grandmother would use, to clean up your stuff while you still can, so you don’t excessively burden your relatives and friends after you pass. Nice and short read.

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Review: Purposeful Retirement: How to Bring Happiness and Meaning to Your Retirement

Purposeful Retirement: How to Bring Happiness and Meaning to Your Retirement by Hyrum W. Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This audiobook was quite enjoyable. The author was one of the creators of the Franklin Day Planner, and you can tell he is experienced at teaching his system to large audiences – he has a way to tell anecdotes that seems well practiced. His stories are often personal, and they feel different than others, unique. And the sense of humor is not the antiseptic, safe-from-innuendo stuff that you almost always read in these kinds of books. This felt more like your uncle telling you what he’s learned in his retirement. And what made this even more interesting? The narrator reminded me of the pompous baritone of Ted Baxter, from Mary Tyler Moore. The personality in the writing was a great match for this. Very appropriate!

The advice tended to the get-off-your-ass variety. Wholly appropriate. Some help in finding purpose.


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Review: The Awakened Millionaire: A Manifesto for the Spiritual Wealth Movement

The Awakened Millionaire: A Manifesto for the Spiritual Wealth Movement by Joe Vitale
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Should really be called “The Awakened Would-Love-To-Be-A-Millionaire, And Thinks He’d Be Really Good With Lots Of Money And Could Do Some Good Things For People, But Probably Won’t Earn That Much”. I was disappointed with this. It is not a how-to book, it is heavily motivational. And it seemed like it was aimed at people without means. I get the feel of Steve Martin’s bit on “How You Can Be a Millionaire and Never Pay Taxes”. (“First, get a million dollars…”) No thanks. I like the concept, but not this execution.

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Review: Architecting the Future Enterprise

Architecting the Future Enterprise by Deborah J. Nightingale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve read a number of books and manuals on enterprise architecture. Many provide help in creating architectures from a high level down to a low level. “Architecting the Future Enterprise” is like most of the books I’ve read on architecture, but the aim was a little higher. The book spends a lot of time on documenting the company and its needs at a very high level. Think mission/vision/values, but deeper drill-downs on those kinds of topics. The book covers the architecting process from this high level down through scenario planning and architecture documentation, not to the deep technical level but more to the story level. This certainly isn’t the process you would use to architect, say your cloud computing environment, but you would use it to architect at a higher level.

Like most architecture processes, doing everything that is recommended generates huge amounts of documentation, and would take massive time investments, including time from high level executives. When I read these books, I look for suggestions on economizing and timeboxing the processes. I didn’t get that here. That’s why you pay consultants to manage these processes, I guess, including the authors I suspect. I liked how the authors described the process and the kinds of issues that need to be analyzed and documented. This certainly could be a useful book for those going through an architecture exercise at work, to help you think through your process and to avoid missing something that you might need.


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Review: Daisy Jones & The Six

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What makes “Daisy Jones and the Six” stand out is the way it is written. The author uses the gimmick of presenting this story as if it were a non-fiction book about a band, written entirely using strung together quotes from a variety of characters, from the band members to people the band interacted with. If you have ever watched VH1’s “Behind the Music”, this will seem very familiar. If you read “Live from New York”, it was written in much the same way. This book feels like those documentary takes on bands and a show. But the author has extended this made-up documentary into an interesting story, dropping some surprises into the story near the end, making you really want to finish the book to find out what happens to the band members. I found the story fun to listen to, and I could picture the band being part of the 70s band scene. The author even duplicated the typical discussion of song lyrics you hear and see in documentary sources on rock bands. This felt very realistic.

I listened to this on audio, and I believe that greatly increased my enjoyment of this book. Those snippets of quotes were often very short, a few words or a sentence by one character. The audiobook used different voice actors for each character, and it made them very distinctive. I can imagine if I were to have read the book, I would have had to work harder to recall each character by name, and I suspect that extra effort would have lessened my enjoyment. In addition, many of the narrators’ lines were very well acted, more emphatic and emotional than most audiobooks. The audiobook was very well done.


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Review: Ain't No Place for a Hero: Borderlands

Ain't No Place for a Hero: Borderlands by Kaitlin Tremblay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second Pop Classics book I’ve read, and I enjoy the topics chosen and the writing. Here, you get some edge to that writing, as author Tremblay provides a very personal and impassioned take on a video game that I knew nothing about. The author provides some deep analyses of the game Borderlands, focusing on the inclusivity designed into the game. This is apparently quite novel in gaming. I enjoy this kind of deep analysis of media properties, with the understanding that people often find patterns when there aren’t intentional patterns existing. She made it interesting, though, by finding plenty and corroborating intentions in some cases with the game developers. Probably the best audience is those that know the game and that are interested in broader societal impacts of game design, but many will find interest.

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Review: Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship

Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship by John Baldwin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

You get a good idea of the story here by reading the blurb on the cover – Confederate ship harassing Federal maritime industry doesn’t know the war has ended. That is a good, short description. The book adds a lot to this story, but also misses some opportunities. The main source for the book is the diary/ship logs of Executive Officer Conway Whittle, who comes across as a true Southerner in manner and temperament, charming the occasional woman while pining for his true love, and planning a duel for honor near the end of the book. After learning of Whittle’s work with the Confederacy, we learn about the ship procured for the Confederacy and of the efforts to sneak away from Britain. We then follow Whittle and his ship the Shenandoah on a year long voyage with stops in Australia and Pacific islands, and capturing US whaling ships in the Arctic Ocean. And then, we follow them back to Britain, their choice of venue to lower the odds of being hung as pirates. Their tour was a mix of terror from weather issues, visits to ports where the crew is treated quite well, capturing and firing whaling and other merchant vessels, and typical boredom from many long and continuous days at sea. You learn a lot about sailing and cruising during the war years, and you understand how difficult the work could be. Missing from the story was additional context that would have analyzed the place of the Shenandoah in the strategy of the Confederacy, summarized the impact of the ship on the war, and positioned the story of the warriors fighting beyond the end of their war with other examples from history.

One story, from near the end of the book, was an example of how the author approached this material. Sailors on the boat were held captive by the British government after they surrendered their ship at the completion of their voyage. The British decided to free the sailors, unless they were British citizens who had, in effect, joined a foreign Navy. Those sailors would be put to death. The crew, many of whom were British, according to the author had no time to collaborate, yet all answered under interrogation that they were Southerners. The author expresses surprise that this has happened, and stretches this section out to draw out some drama. Yet it seems to me that the best explanation is that all these British sailors knew this was the case, and had talked about this during the long trip back to Britain. No surprise. But it was a kind of obvious attempt at drama by the author that wasn’t necessary.

Overall, I enjoyed learning about the voyage of the Shenandoah, and getting to know and to understand some of the sailors and officers. It is quite a story, and the Executive Officer’s diary was a great source to mine.


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