Review: Slow Travel: Escape the Grind and Explore the World

Slow Travel: Escape the Grind and Explore the World by Jennifer M. Sparks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This short travel book focused on the planning aspects of long-term travel. The author speaks from experience, having gone on a number of multi-month trips she relates here. If anything, her trip descriptions are just background here, as the focus is on the planning of extended trips. The author provides some useful ideas on deciding what you want to get out of travel, deciding where to go, affording extended trips, preparing your home and career for absence, packing, and more. The author provides short checklists here, but they are mostly quite high-level “did you think about” items and not the kind of checklist with details. Overall, a good overview of planning for extended trips, with a balance of example and how-to suggestions.

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Review: Forlorn River

Forlorn River by Zane Grey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked up Grey’s popular “Nevada”, but when I found it was a sequel to this book, I decided to read them in order. In “Forlorn River”, I was treated with a story about as I expected. Grey’s writing is more modern than I expected in this 1926 Western. Less of the flowery prose of some of Grey’s other stories, this seemed more direct. Grey did have a tendency to latch on to a word and re-use it to excess – the word of this book is “ejaculated”, in the non-porn sense. Listening to this on audio, I was glad I was using my headphones. The story was typical Western fare, with honor and coyboying along side romance with the rancher’s daughter, who in this book just got back from college. The characters were well written and acted their parts. It was disappointing to see the token Indian treated much like a minor character, doing things for unsatisfactorily explained reasons, and disappearing entirely while apparently on-stage and part of the action near the end. And the plot seemed too contrived at places – the hero conveniently does exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time here to generate the climax. I found the naivety unappealing for an otherwise winning character. The narrator in the version of the audiobook I listened to, Jack Sondericker, did a good job with the various voices, best with hero Ben and his group. All told, I found it an enjoyable story and I look forward to reading more from Grey.

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Review: The Transparency Sale: How Unexpected Honesty and Understanding the Buying Brain Can Transform Your Results

The Transparency Sale: How Unexpected Honesty and Understanding the Buying Brain Can Transform Your Results by Todd Caponi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve worked in technical sales for almost two decades now, and I’ve been involved in many sales cycles. I liked “The Transparency Sale” because it agrees with what I’ve seen, and takes the best practices a little farther than many other sales books I’ve read. The author suggests calling out early in the sales process your own product’s weaknesses. I’ve found this counterintuitive with most sales managers and account managers I’ve worked with, who hope to eliminate any discussion of perceived weaknesses. I buy the author’s tact of starting with this discussion to build trust. When I’ve been in talks that start this way, the sales process went much more smoothly. I also appreciate the author’s additional points, including getting in front of contract terms negotiations and using references. I’ve taken many classes on creating and giving good technical demonstrations, appealing to limbic thinking in our prospects, and I appreciate those learnings, but they often stand alone, unconnected with the bigger sales process orchestration. Caponi’s book makes a good companion to those demo processes in order to think about the overall sales and account management process in an integrated way. Good read.

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Review: The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms by Vishen Lakhiani
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is another example of a book that is as much an advertisement for the author’s website and paid content as it is to provide some actionable ideas to live your life in a better way. Many, if not all of the suggestions I’ve read before in different books, and in fact the author quotes from some of these source books quite often. To the good, the author does interject personal experiences that are at times interesting. He also has an energy-filled writing style. To the bad, the author writes this in a way typical for stretching limited content, by repeatedly telling you what he will be covering in upcoming chapters. You end up hearing what’s coming up a few times before you actually get to it, and at times when you get to the meat of the ideas you are underwhelmed because it’s familiar. On the audio version of this book, the author narrates. You get his excitement, but the reading is unsteady, with some odd timing. I would consider reading more by this author, but would look to verify that it wasn’t advertising focused.

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Review: Clotel: Or, the President's Daughter

Clotel: Or, the President's Daughter by William Wells Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story was about as I expected but the writing was quite a bit different. Given the time period in which it was written I was expecting more flowery, Victorian prose. Instead, “Clotel” was written in a more straightforward style. And on audio, it came across sounding like a radio drama from the 40s. At times, the author started a new chapter with something like, “Recall that when we left Mary she was in disguise and travelling through territory dangerous to her.” I listened to the audio version of this book, and this kind of writing stood out. I found it comfortable listening, despite the content that had the expected level of tragedy and violence. The story itself was interesting in the situations depicted, although I found it a bit difficult to follow the character changes on audio. Reading might have helped in this regard.

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Review: Pantsdrunk: Kalsarikanni: The Finnish Path to Relaxation

Pantsdrunk: Kalsarikanni: The Finnish Path to Relaxation by Miska Rantanen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This moment’s “The Preppy Handbook”. A take off on Scandanavian living memes recently popular in books. This book was humorous in style but not in substance – I smiled at the title and at how the book was organized, but not so much at the actual content. (view spoiler)[ It is all about sitting in your underwear and drinking. All about it. And even more about it. (hide spoiler)] I listened on audio. Probably not the best choice for this book, given other reviews pointing out the positive aspects of the feel of the paper in the dead tree version.

Those Finns…


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Review: The Future

The Future by Nick Montfort
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Montfort tells a history of the future. Or, in other words, what “the future” meant to people over time. He does this in this short book by focusing on a few specific topics. One was the utopian writers from the last turn of the century. He covers how the future was portrayed in art, and in various World’s Fairs and other exhibits (like EPCOT). He describes the founding of hypertext and HTML and how that was an attempt to build a future. And he describes some future depictions in books of a more recent vintage, what I call “scenario planning fiction”. Given the shortness of the chapters, the author can only mention some specific examples and muse about their connection to society of the day and to the actual creation of the future, but if you are in the mood for these kinds of musings, you may find this of interest. I enjoy these kinds of books, and appreciated the smattering of examples and the comparisons and analysis. The book ends with a call to use the arts and media to create scenarios for the future. Makes sense. I suspect this would be even better with more length.

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