Review: Down the River Unto the Sea

Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Many of Mosley’s books seem a little off kilter to me. I’m not positive why, but I’d say what drives that thought is that the main characters are quite manic in their internal thoughts, and the story lives in those thoughts. At times I wish there was more description of the environment, but that would change the feeling of the book, and given Mosley’s expertise in writing these kinds of novels, it would probably be detrimental. I guess I’ll leave the moody descriptions to James Lee Burke. Here, we live in Joe Oliver’s mind, a former cop who was framed and served time in prison, facing life changing violence and life changing reflection. And he continues that reflection here, always wondering if he’s become a violent person himself, always testing. That is the feel of this book. Like many of Mosley’s books, there’s a violently crazy sidekick that serves to keep our hero a step removed from the evil that pervades others within the book. And, also to formula, there is a daughter to protect, and a convoluted plot that doesn’t fully pull together. On reflection, this was about what I’d expect from Mosley, although perhaps somewhat darker. I enjoyed it in its familiarity.

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Review: Service Fanatics: How to Build Superior Patient Experience the Cleveland Clinic Way

Service Fanatics: How to Build Superior Patient Experience the Cleveland Clinic Way by James Merlino
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This doesn’t feel like a normal how-to book. Instead, it is mostly reflections of the author’s journey creating a customer satisfaction program at Cleveland Clinic and at other places where he has consulted. This seemed quite high level and anecdotal, without consistent recommendations coming out of them. One thing to keep in mind is that the author had strong upper management sponsorship of the satisfaction program. Without strong backing, I suspect the outcomes would have been drastically less interesting. Also note that, while the author has consulted at a number of organizations in different industries, a majority of this book is focused on the world of the hospital, with doctors and groups holding much of the political capital running the organization. Not every organization is comparable, and the suggestions may or may not apply. But overall, I am a sucker for good business anecdotes that illustrate common business processes in new ways. I found many of the anecdotes were good at illustrating the processes the author was promoting.

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Review: Exterminator: Thoroughbred Legends

Exterminator: Thoroughbred Legends by Eva Jolene Boyd
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I believe Exterminator was the earliest subject of a book in the Thoroughbred Legends series. Because of that, this book is quite different than the others. The times were different, and horse racing was a different kind of game than it became a few years later. In addition, as a gelding, there wasn’t the progeny to write about, which tends to consume a large portion of most of these books. This book makes up for that lack in spades, though, as the horse had (was it) 10 trainers, and raced in 100 (or 99) races. The horse also had an interesting owner who made his money on Swamp Root patent medicine, and who had some interesting practices. His constant fighting with Exterminator’s trainers reminded me of George Steinbrenner. I was surprised after completing the book and reviewing the horse’s record that he had as many wins as he had. These books focus on wins generally, but in this one, the non-wins seemed more plentiful and well written. I guess when you win 50 races it gets to be kind of common. This book really had an interesting lead character with the owner, and I found it entertaining. I liked the author’s book on Native Dancer in the Thoroughbred Legends series, and I look forward to reading author Boyd’s other book in the series about Assault.

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Review: Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan

Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan by Scott Simon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed parts of this, though not the parts I expected before I began reading. This book sat on my TBR pile of baseball books, as I had the impression that that was what this was about. But here, Simon interweaves personal stories of his family with stories of recent Chicago sports teams. And I found Simon’s family stories, and the sports stories where he is a character were more interesting than his perspectives on, for instance, Bull’s management during the winning seasons that were so long ago. I most enjoyed his descriptions of hanging out with some people who might be considered one step removed from athletic greatness – like family friend Jack Brickhouse, and Luc Longley, who Simon befriends and kind of becomes one of his posse members. Simon doesn’t appear to have the personality to be the kind to hang out with your Jordans or Pippens or Ditkas or Graces. It comes across as nerdy humblebragging. Overall, this was at its best when Simon talks about his family. The reportage on the Chicago pro sports teams of the 80s and 90s was a nice trip down memory lane for a Chicago sports fan, but was about what you’d expect from a reporter.

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Review: How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life

How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life by Kay Peterson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In reading this, it seems the author is offering up a rehash of Myers Briggs, but including the word learning in as many descriptions as possible. The author includes 9 “ways of learning”, some opposites of others, some overlapping others, with the thought that you prefer to act “to type” as a default but can modify your actions and thoughts to include the other ways in your decision-making process. The ways of learning, such as thinking, acting, and reflecting, (and which are illustrated on the book’s cover) seem to me to be the actions associated with a flowchart that a person might use while making decisions. I like an occasional reminder to think using a process, and this book worked as that, but I didn’t see the tie-in to learning. This is more a general guide to decision-making. It seems to fall in between books describing how people associated with a Myers Briggs type think and a decision-making guide. I could see where this kind of classification could be useful, but it seems one of many, while trying to be something else entirely. The classifications were not crisp, they felt mushy and over-simplified. Not my cup of tea.

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Review: Fat City

Fat City by Leonard Gardner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well written story of men in the boxing world based in agricultural California in the 50s or 60s. One boxer is a down on his luck veteran trying to get back into the game while sliding into despair, while the other boxer is young and shows initial promise, but is beaten down by the life. The other main character is the trainer who takes shortcuts while continuing to make his living working with these boxers with pedestrian dreams of victory. The story also follows some others, including a Mexican boxer with a long career and many bouts that shows the likely result of a “good” boxing career. It’s all depressing in the end, but the author teases the reader with hope, dangled just out of reach, then yanked away by the system. The author provides plenty of characters to measure against. A joy to read -- you can sense the quality of the writing and the skill of the author -- but ultimately depressing.

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Review: The Power of Cute

The Power of Cute by Simon May
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Academic riffing on the meaning of cuteness in culture. The book shows the difference in what cute means in American and European cultures compared to Japanese culture. There are definitions and conjectures about what it all means. Strangest point related to how cute is often one small step away from monstrous. Deeper than many a pop culture book nowadays, but more on theory and conjecture and less on the statistics and objective observations you’d expect in a pop science book. Once I got used to the intellectual level, I found it provided some interesting things to think about, though nothing notably prescriptive. The Princeton University Press audiobook was overwhelmingly British.

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