Review: Pegasus Descending

Pegasus Descending by James Lee Burke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm going a few years back in the Robicheaux backlist to read the few books that I missed while reading through. While I feel a bit jaded about recent Robicheaux stories, this one felt like a breath of familiar bayou air. Again, the humidity drips off the page. The characters act the way you expect (and don't overreact like it seems in Robicheaux stories of more recent vintage). And the bad guys are the ones you've come to expect - mobbed up guys with Miami ties, small business men gone big due to links to casinos, people linked to movies (again with the movie industry baddies, albeit just a passing mention here). And the atmosphere is vintage Burke. My favorite bit in the book is the description of one of the victims, nicknamed Crustacean Man, and his backstory. You can picture the police using that name when referencing the case, giving it some respectability despite its outlandishness. Some interesting personality here from the police department which is more than I usually notice of the officers Robicheaux works with. In most of Burke's books, the other police officers in his and other departments have much the same rolls as redshirts in Star Trek - nondescript characters known for doing the rote work and often becoming victims. I enjoyed this one, more as a throwback to older Robicheaux mysteries. And as normal, the audiobook narrated by Will Patton, is pitch perfect. To me, Patton delivers the mood of this series defined by Burke.

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Review: Genomics: A Very Short Introduction

Genomics: A Very Short Introduction by John M Archibald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Covers the history of genomics and provides a view into the future given the availability of newer tools and assuming further rapid growth in the industry. I found it hard to listen to the audio version of this book given the acronyms and the industry-specific nomenclature -- this is really a history of technologies. I did enjoy the speculation that concluded the book.

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Review: Chaplin's Vintage Year: The History of the Mutual-Chaplin Specials

Chaplin's Vintage Year: The History of the Mutual-Chaplin Specials by Michael J. Hayde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not quite what I expected. I assumed this was a critical review of some of Chaplin's silent movies, or a kind of movie biography. The book does cover the art in these Chaplin movies, as well as others done around the same time, but that wasn't the main purpose. Instead, we get the business behind these movies. The author provides a well-researched history of the early film industry, including the film creators/studios, but also the distributors and the theaters. These different groups of companies interact in different ways over the early years of the industry, with power moving back and forth over time as new contract terms are developed and spread throughout the industries, and as companies combined through mergers or investments or other agreements. This book follows the flow of ownership of these movies, as well as showing how the money flowed. If you are looking for something like this, it is well done. I was also impressed that the book didn't stop at the end of the silent movie era, but continues to near the present day. I grew up in the Quad Cities area, where there was a company that sold copies of silent movies including these Chaplin Mutual films, Blackhawk Films. I still have a couple of their catalogs from the 70s. I was surprised and happy to see Blackhawk covered in some depth near the end of this book as holders of many of the original copies of Chaplin's silent movies. Overall, I found this enjoyable as a business history revolving around early films. And I appreciated the descriptions of Chaplin's early silent films, including those by Mutual Chaplin.

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Review: Secretariat: Thoroughbred Legends

Secretariat: Thoroughbred Legends by Timothy T. Capps
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In a way, these racehorse biographies are limited in what they cover and in many ways how it is covered. They tend to be chronological, starting with ancestry, followed by breeding, training, racing, breeding, and progeny following, and with owners covered along the way. This book was no exception. I found the first part of the book was a bit more confusing, following many, many horses related, closely and tangentially, to Secretariat. This was overkill for this short book. The author turned it around on the rest of the book. The racing stories were well written and held interest, and the story of Secretariat's non-optimal breeding career was well done. Overall, one of the better ones in the Thoroughbred Legends series. Note that I hadn't previously read a book on Secretariat, so the novelty helped in my opinion. Had I already read one of the many books on Secretariat, I may not have rated this one as high.

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Review: Seize the Day

Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I can like the writing but not get much out of the story. That happened here. Perhaps this hit too close to home. Perhaps I needed to read something more positive and less urban. Funny in its way, but sad through and through. On to the next.

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Review: My Family and Other Animals

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A family’s moves to Corfu. The story revolves around the differences in the children, including one who believes himself a great writer and another who collects animals. The ending was a party that becomes farce as all the animals collected throughout the book make unplanned appearances. I listened to the BBC audio adaptation, and the addition of animal sounds and other sound effects helped the story. I found it a nice, short entertaining story, similar to a comedic television show episode.

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Review: Selfie Made: Your Ultimate Guide to Social Media Stardom

Selfie Made: Your Ultimate Guide to Social Media Stardom by Meridith Valiando Rojas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m an old hand at the internet and an early user of Facebook and some other social tools. And this was a take on social that is a step beyond what I was familiar with. Rojas approaches her topic from her expertise gained from running her company, DigiTour, which provides a live tour of viral social media “stars”. From her perspective, having a post go viral is key, and she provides advice on how to engineer your social media for optimum virality, if that’s a word. Interspersed with the advice are stories of her business. I found these stories were very interesting, with parts of her experience being a kind of concert promoter mixed in with her learnings in social media. As a how-to book, this was interesting given the currency of the topic, but I couldn’t decide whether the topics have limited audience or not. The audience Rojas describes tends to be young, younger than 25, and you can’t tell if these tactics work with older audiences. The book is very worthwhile if you want to appeal to this demographic. I also enjoyed the “business biography” of DigiTour and Rojas’ growth operating her business. Great tour stories, and great stories about how to blaze trails in creating a new kind of venue, a “talent” show where the “talent” is in acquiring views online.

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