Review: All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business

All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business by Mel Brooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What are the most likely stories I would expect from a Mel Brooks autobiography? I would expect stories about his acting in movies and his comedy albums. I would expect some stories about making his movies, and background on the funny and memorable bits. And I’d expect some personal stuff. Ends up I mostly misjudged Brooks. He spends much of the first half of his book talking about his childhood and his efforts before achieving fame in the movies. This I found the most entertaining parts of the book. The second half of the book focused on his movies and his life with his wife. A surprising (to me) focus of many of his stories was the business aspects and the work aspects of directing and producing his films. I was expecting a thoroughly gossipy story but instead got the hard-working producer describing some of his biggest problems and how he solved them. I was also expecting all comedy, but Brooks describes his well-rounded portfolio of films of all types. I found his stories interesting from a business perspective, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. His background on his comedy films was quite interesting. I especially enjoyed his involvement with the incomparable Alfred Hitchcock while filming “High Anxiety”. If you’re looking for stories about his comedies, this has it. If you are looking for more traditional stories about childhood and early career struggles, this has it. If you want to know about the problems of a studio head, here you go. Brooks covers it all.

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Review: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I graduated from college and started my first full time job, I celebrated by buying a book. No surprise. I chose one that was new, at the time, and intellectual, and related to my job choosing technologies for business optimization and general use. My choice of three decades ago – Zuboff’s first book “In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power”. It was interesting to me, but nothing very surprising. Zuboff wrote with a professor’s eye to detail, making more arguments than I normally see to make her cases. I found her style of writing started with the bones of a popular book but added academic detail uncommon in books I normally read.

Fast forward to the end of my career, and I see Zuboff has released another large tome. Here, I had the benefit of the audio version as well as the hardback to refer to. Her style remains similar to her earlier book – develop some arguments and provide extensive evidence and examples to make her points. I don’t recall if her first book was written to sound an alarm on automation, but this one absolutely is written to sound alarms, this time against technology companies abuse of privacy rights. Zuboff dives into the recent history of technology companies using more and more personal data to shift power from citizens to the companies. Main boogeyman here is Google, but after developing her story with Google, she adds similar stories of corporate overreach from Microsoft, Facebook and others. While I recall her first book reading more as If aimed at technologists to persuade them to fix their own problems, this one seems more aimed at prompting a political response. The outlook here is dire, and I didn’t get a lot of hopeful solutions from the reading. For a deep take on the issues of companies using personal and behavioral data on a massive scale to modify the way people think and act, this is an excellent start. And there’s a massive footnote section!


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Review: Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos

Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos by Michael Imperioli
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I was a Sopranos fan when it originally aired, I haven’t thought much about it in the last five or ten years. But I always thought it was entertaining and groundbreaking television. I recently saw the prequel and then noticed this book was out. I picked it up.

The book is written as a series of conversations between two of the actors on the series and a number of cast and crew members from the original show. Ends up that this was originally a podcast, with guests for each episode that were interviewed. The authors then re-arranged snippets of the interviews to correspond to chapters relating to the development of the pilot, each season, and some special chapters on the writers and the music. The authors wrote short introduction paragraphs in front of each snippet, so you had some context and a description of the speaker. I found this quite useful in reading this book. I also applaud the consistent inclusion of the names of each speaker for each bit of conversation that they had. So many times I’ve read books like this that don’t annotate the conversations with the speakers and they get totally confusing. This was much nicer. The overall effect of chopping up conversations and refitting them into this season-based format wasn’t perfect. For instance some episodes were described by multiple people, sometimes in different ways, while other episodes were barely or not even mentioned. I suppose if you wanted to listen to the original podcasts you could get the same information divided up by guest instead of topic, but that would take a long, long time to go through. I tend to prefer audiobooks, but when I listened to a sample of this audiobook, those familiar characters from the show sound like they aged, and they seemed to be speaking very slowly. If they clipped together the original audio snippets, that would be a saving grace, perhaps, but I couldn’t tell it that happened with the sample.

For those who want to hear some of those stories about the actors and writers and directors that explain what happened during the show, this was a fun way to hear those stories. You really get the feel that the participants were all very positive on their experiences – most of the stories are glowing. Glad I read it – I really enjoyed it.


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Review: The Day of the Locust

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In Hollywood, everything is fake. And it’s depressing for those living there. And also for those reading about it. This felt in the same vein as Frank Norris novels like “McTeague”. Same kind of mood. But at least Norris’ characters show a fall. I’m not sure West’s characters had highs enough to fall from when we come across them. I thought I would enjoy this more, but perhaps this isn’t one to enjoy. I did enjoy the writing, the descriptions of the fake houses really made it clear what West was going for here, he pulls no punches. Looking forward to the next by him in the Library of America volume.

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Review: Klara and the Sun

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”. I started that book without having read any reviews about the story itself, and found the gradual realization that it was about the lives of (view spoiler)[ cloned people raised to provide replacement organs for the “real” people, while maintaining their own kind of humanity (hide spoiler)]. It was touching, and provided a new and valuable perspective into the issues it focused on. Here, we have a very similar story.

(view spoiler)[Instead of cloning, the focus here is on androids – artificially intelligent human-looking robots built to provide friendship to human teens during their formative years. Like in “Never Let Me Go”, the story is from the perspective of the “servants”. To provide some differences in personality, each android is programmed a little differently, and can be better at some things and worse at others. This allows the androids to be sold a lot like cars – you can look for the one that fits your needs best. Ishiguro’s androids, at least some, spend time worrying about issues that are unique to them, like how they can help sell themselves to children and their parents, how to understand and learn their “friend” in order to provide good service, and strangely, they learn about the sun. These androids are solar powered, so need the sun to maintain their power. The perceptive android that this story revolves about even goes so far as to create a mythology about the sun, and goes to great lengths based on these beliefs to support her friend. The story brings to mind the question of how to tell if a being is sentient, and provides much to think about. (hide spoiler)] This is one of those books that gives you new things to think about long after you read it. I look forward to the next one in this vein by Ishiguro.


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Review: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is one of the few rereads I’ve done. I originally bought this book in the late 80s. Adler is a Chicago icon, and I found a paperback copy of this book autographed at Marshall Fields on State Street. You couldn’t get more Chicago than that. I reread this in the hopes of relearning ways to rip apart a book as you read it, something that I had read about those decades ago. Ends up it was not this book I was thinking of. Instead of a methodical way of parsing a book involving copious notetaking, Adler’s method is more cerebral. This method provides a number of questions to answer, and involves starting with skimming and perusal of contents and indexes, but without the necessity of notetaking along the way. Adler also says that the use of his method in its entirety should be restricted to only a few major books. His method seems great for researchers using a book for further study or as a key source, but it is not as valuable for more recreational reading. His method is not a time saver – it is a time eater. As more of a recreational reader, I wasn’t the main target for this book. However, I did enjoy the method espoused, and will think in terms of the basic questions to ask of one’s understanding of a book, which are useful in many contexts, including some recreational reading.

I must comment on Adler's writing style. He writes in a very conversational way, which is disarming, even though he is continually diving deeper and deeper into his subject. You feel you are being taught by a very thorough teacher, led in your study but engagingly, given the topic is typically dry.

I had to check this out from the library. Ends up that I believe I sold my autographed copy to the former used bookstore over the now-closed Artists Cafe in the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, probably 30 years ago. I can imagine it still resides on the bookshelf of a collector somewhere in the city.

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Review: Olga Dies Dreaming

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xóchitl González
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This wasn’t my typical read, but having won an advanced listening copy, I gave it a shot. I enjoyed the author’s style in writing. The plot didn’t make many surprising moves, beyond (view spoiler)[ bounding into anti-government political intrigue in Puerto Rico (hide spoiler)]. The characters struck me as standard ethnic and sexual minority characters you find on most current television shows. The rich customers of Olga's wedding planning service were always white and always ridiculous. The plot was a bit more convoluted and urban-edgy than a Halmark movie, but similar in plot. The only really odd part was the time in Puerto Rico, which seemed out of place for this kind of story. What I will remember is that Olga ridiculed her rich customers but really wanted to be exactly like them, down to doing odd things for show (as with her showing up her cousin by providing stolen expensive napkins for her wedding) and using illegal ways to make money. There is growth by the end of the story, but it goes on a bit long.

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