Review: When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow. You know the topic of the book when you start, but Kalantihi begins with his autobiography, where you understand that he was smart, with wide interests from literature to medicine, and ambitious to make his way in the world. He describes his life, then he describes his life impacted by a cancer diagnosis, in a reflective way. I found this very interesting throughout, well written and well thought out, even though he didn’t actually finish the book. It’s one of those books where you feel you learned something applicable to your own life, even though that didn’t seem to be the book’s intent. I rarely re-read books, but I can easily see myself rereading this as I get older.

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Review: Zero Gravity

Zero Gravity by Woody Allen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Allen provides us with 19 stories. 18 of these are “of a type” that use wild, descriptive character names and focus on wordplay, and are all around ten pages, give or take. These also are full of not-so-subtle references to the kinds of information covered in 300 level or higher liberal arts courses in college, as well as recent issues of People magazine. Hopefully you’ve been paying attention. The final story is quite a bit longer, has characters with normal, forgettable names, and feels a bit lower key, less manic. I found this the best of the bunch. With the shorter stories Allen is showing us his cleverness. In the final story, “Growing Up in Manhattan”, he’s showing us his storytelling ability, and I find that was the most memorable story in the collection. Overall, I found a little goes a long way. If I ran across one of these shorter stories, say in a magazine with a variety of other stories and types of writing, I’d like it quite a bit. But reading a book’s worth in a row became more of a chore the farther you went.

I won this book in some internet contest, but that didn't impact my review.

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Review: Saga: Book One

Saga: Book One by Brian K. Vaughan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve not read many graphic novels, and none that struck me like this one. While many of the graphic novels that I have read seemed like a small step up from the comic books of the past, this felt like a novel illustrated. The story seemed more complex, not in a way to make the story more interesting but more as a reflection of the world that the author built. The characters were entertaining, the art was good. And I’m figuring out where to add the next volume to my reading list, sooner rather than later.

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Review: Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Every Cloak Rolled in Blood by James Lee Burke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Burke heads deep into ghost territory in this one, deeper than most of the recent Dave Robicheaux books. Combine that with a protagonist who is a cantankerous, retired 85, but in whose actions seem half his age, and you have a couple of main aspects of this book that tend to turn me off. Burke is really stretching his reader’s believability. But the writing makes up for this. And the complexity of the story helps – there’s a lot going on here. A great feel for place again, this time small town Montana. I’ll keep reading him, but he’s moving closer to Poe or even Lovecraft as time goes on.

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Review: A Grand Tour Of Italy

A Grand Tour Of Italy by Joseph Luzzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not what I was expecting, but better. Instead of focusing on the typical tourist highpoints and landmarks, Luzzi focuses on the Italian character and the history of the grand tour in Italy, talking about historic touring. It’s a very interesting context. I plan on listening to more by Professor Luzzi.

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Review: Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley

Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley by Carolyn Chen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m not a Silicon Valley employee, but I have worked for companies based there, and for software companies who operate in the same general manner. So I recognized the lengths that companies are going through to generate more output from their labor inputs. And one way to do this is to squeeze out those spiritual needs of their employees and manage them as part of their optimization of work time. The book gives examples of this. It seems to me the author couldn’t decide whether this would be a how-to book or more of a scholarly description of the move to push scrubbed Eastern religion to their employees. The writing wavered between these two goals, but I believe the how-to content wasn’t complete enough. It ends up being a reasonable description of the use of watered down Eastern religious practices such as meditation. Interesting, but I didn’t read anything I hadn’t already seen in practice in non-Silicon Valley employers. Scariest concept – HR departments are now studying cults to try to duplicate their ability to attract and maintain members. I will be avoiding any Kool-Aid in company meetings from now on.

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Review: La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West

La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West by Francis Parkman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I come from a small town in Northwestern Illinois and grew up with an interest in history, especially local history. Being from a rural area, we considered anything within an hour or so, also generally rural areas, to be neighbors. Starved Rock, in Utica, I always considered to be close, so I was interested in the history of the area, and had visited many times. I’m also amazed that local history was rarely covered in school growing up. So now, 40 years past high school, I learn that explorer LaSalle visited Starved Rock multiple times as he explored the Midwest, and even built a fort on the rock. LaSalle’s visits to Starved Rock bookend his multiple trips on downstream on the Illinois River on his way to the Mississippi and even to the gulf. Even more interesting is that we learn in this book that the author, Francis Parkman, even visited Starved Rock to determine the location of an Indian village and site of a massacre. So far in Parkman’s history series on England and France in the New World, this is the only mention of the author writing about himself, so it stands out. I find it disappointing that the visit of a famous historian to the area, now over 150 years ago, never made the radar of any of my history teachers in school. Sad.

Stepping off my soapbox, I enjoyed this story of LaSalle’s many explorations of the Midwest and, unfortunate for him, Texas. Parkman provides a surprising level of detail and is able to tell the exploration story that keeps the interest high, even following the remnants of his group of explorers after his death, finding their way back to civilization, not surprisingly through Starved Rock. This was the volume in Parkman’s series that I thought would be most interesting to me, given the local content, and so far I’d say it was. While I enjoy Parkman’s ability to craft a story, his next volume that appears to be all Canadian isn’t calling to me.


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