Review: Gene Smith's Sink: A Wide-Angle View

Gene Smith's Sink: A Wide-Angle View by Sam Stephenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I took a flyer on this book, based on its curious title. I had never heard of Gene Smith, but found that Smith was a prolific photographer and artist. He lived the stereotypical life of an artist, focused on the creation of art, at times oblivious of all else. The author approaches Smith like a private detective, tracking down acquaintances based on brief mentions in papers or on the audio tape that Smith liked to leave running and recording. You get a great taste of the life of an artist and his entourage in 50s Gotham. And a bonus here is that Smith lived among a number of jazz greats, and recorded them surreptitiously. So in addition to the life of a professional photographer/artist, you get a slice of life of a number of jazz artists. This really does a good job of putting you into the time and place. You can almost smell the reefer and feel oblivious about missing your rent payment.

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Review: The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I picked this book up due to a mention as a book to build leadership qualities by Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. It’s what you’d expect in a feel-good story about the growth of the rowing teams in pre-war University of Washington, culminating in a victory against all odds at the Olympics in Berlin hosted by Hitler. The way author Brown told this story was to focus first on one teammate, through a difficult childhood and into college. While building this hero, the author also introduces other team members, the enigmatic coach, and the unlikely guide, a boat builder from England. You follow the teams through the years, seeing disappointment with poor results, but showing growth in skills and in finally coming together as a team. The author makes rowing races exciting. The sporting action consists of a few races that are very well described. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Edward Hermann. When you get to the final race, the narration has sped up to a frantic pace to match the story. I found this went beyond normal audiobook narration to performance, and it really worked well. I’d say this is one of the best non-fiction audiobooks I’ve heard. This book works well on many levels. As a sports book, the sporting scenes are well described and intense. As a history book, the author covers the story of the rowing team, but also provides plentiful background on the people, on the sport, and on the politics behind the sport. And as a leadership book, it provides a story of a team coming together from mostly humble beginnings to be formed into a cohesive unit. You will understand how the coaches and “guide” influenced the team, the impacts that their actions had, and you will feel the growth of the team as they come together. After such an involving book, the reader wants to know what happened to the individuals of the rowing team after their win. Brown includes an extensive history of the team mates and others through the present day, including even the winning boat. Very nice story.

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Review: The Witch Elm

The Witch Elm by Tana French
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It doesn’t seem that this book was a good choice to be the first Tana French mystery to read. The book does carry a mood throughout, but it’s entirely due to the narrator being unlikeable but in a bad situation. French does a nice job putting you in the shoes of someone with recent brain damage, but that’s really not an enjoyable place to be. There were long stretches of repetitive thoughts while we inhabit narrator Toby’s mind, but again, it’s part the brain damage and part that he’s always been a bit oblivious. This plays big here as it is a mystery from the past. My summary – French is excellent at setting a mood but this story won’t leave you in a good place.

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Review: Unstoppable Confidence: How to Use the Power of NLP to Be More Dynamic and Successful

Unstoppable Confidence: How to Use the Power of NLP to Be More Dynamic and Successful by Kent Sayre
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

So, do you need a book to tell you how to repeat affirmations? Probably not, but if you do, this is one of them. Having read a number of books on the concept of influence recently, I wasn’t surprised to see what is discussed here are really a number of basic influence techniques, but where the influencer is also the influencee. Kinda interesting, but also very obvious. This has some new-age overtones that made this sound more spiritual than scientific.

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Review: Big Money Thinks Small: Biases, Blind Spots, and Smarter Investing

Big Money Thinks Small: Biases, Blind Spots, and Smarter Investing by Joel Tillinghast
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

About 2/3 of the way through listening to this audiobook, I thought about what I had learned. The author talks about evaluating companies and their stocks, generally using a great deal of research and spreadsheet work. As you listen to the “case studies” of the companies that he has evaluated and how he architected the evaluations, you are left with the feeling that it takes a special person to do this, one that is single-mindedly dedicated to tracing down the numbers behind the numbers, the forecasts that the company uses but don’t repeat to analysts, and information from sometimes obscure sources. While I originally assumed this was a how-to book, it is far from it. It was more a “here’s why you leave this to professionals” book that is pretending to be a how-to book. I also noticed, about 2/3 of the way through the book, that this would be a perfect book to explain why active fund management could be beneficial compared to index funds in raising return or lowering risk. And then, the author flips a switch and calls this out in the remainder of the book. As a defense of active fund investing, this does a good job. The author writes in a friendly way, and you understand that through his focus he’s able to tell stories about stocks and companies based on evaluation of numbers that are enlightening. What he doesn’t do is give you the belief that you can do these evaluations yourself without a lot of experience. Well written.

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Review: Libra

Libra by Don DeLillo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the audiobook, this story based on the Kennedy assassination had a dreamlike quality. Part of the reason for that is DeLillo’s writing. He is talking about some of the most consequential actions in a person’s life, even in recent history, and he will sometimes stop to describe the way a person is smoking a cigarette, as if it might be a tip-off to why a person acted a certain way. You expect that when you get into conspiracy theories, and this story is really that at its base – the story leading to the action. We follow Lee Harvey Oswald, and all his aliases, from childhood through defection to Russia and return, and we follow him as he’s groomed to be a patsy. While Oswald is the central character in the book, we also spend time in the eyes of his wife and mother, Jack Ruby, and in the CIA mastermind who plots the assassination attempt, including Cubans and mafia figures. I found the storyline with Oswald and the CIA operative to get quite confusing over time, as the author I believe intended, such that the story gets changed and you can’t tell how it happened. Was there a doublecross? DeLillo ends with Oswald’s mother’s lament, which felt quite Shakesperian in tone to close out the story. DeLillo says in an afterward that this was a novel, not non-fiction, and intended to get people to think. But it’s a novelization of a conspiracy theory, interesting and well written, so I can see myself remembering this more than any official version of the story as time goes on. Fact becomes fiction becomes fact, though modified in the process. Hopefully this story is one that readers will be willing to remember over time.

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Review: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found myself laughing quite a lot while listening to this audiobook. I also found myself saying “gross” a lot, too. Sedaris has a tendency to slip into what I’d consider adult-level gross-out humor, usually dragging out the story when he knows the listener will be most squeamish. Think “lancing boils” here. He seems to tell more stories about his rebel, drug-using, younger years here than in his other books I’ve listened to, and they tend to the quite humorous. I found this one of his better collections of stories.

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