Review: The Disorganized Mind: Coaching Your ADHD Brain to Take Control of Your Time, Tasks, and Talents

The Disorganized Mind: Coaching Your ADHD Brain to Take Control of Your Time, Tasks, and Talents by Nancy A. Ratey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this to get insights into the thoughts of one of my loved ones with late diagnosis ADD, and what I learned was as much about me as them. One of the insights here is, not surprisingly, that dealing with the dimension of time can be difficult for those with ADHD. The author provides a number of tactics to deal with this issue, including creating a habit of planning and including some regular notification of the passage of time, like the ringing of an hourly alarm on a watch. I find that these tactics would work well for me as well, as I tend to get carried away by trivial pursuits, forget to consider travel time, and other symptoms as discussed here. Those are just examples. The book discusses quite a range of behaviors. I found the book quite useful. I listened to the audio version, and I found that the stories were quite interesting, but the organization was more for flow than for conciseness. Easy to listen, but easy to forget the points. I found myself re-listening to sections a few days later to remember examples and suggestions. For this reason, and given there are a few lists and todo sections in the book, this may be best read and not listened to.

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Review: Merle Haggard's My House of Memories

Merle Haggard's My House of Memories by Merle Haggard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have enjoyed Haggard’s songs for years. And I’ve read a number of Johnny Cash bios recently, so thought I would learn a bit about Haggard. I guess those Johnny Cash biographies led me to imagine Haggard’s life in the same way – overcoming a difficult early life, overcoming weaknesses like pills and women, and learning and becoming successful. At the end of the Cash books I’ve read, he stands larger than life, noble, wise. Haggard also overcame, somehow, early difficulties, but in the end the picture that remains is him nude and plastered on a houseboat, as he often describes. Haggard isn’t out to make himself a saint. In that he is quite successful in this book.

The stories here jump around quite a bit. There are a number of stories about his troubled youth and incarceration – that’s more than half the book. There’s a lot on his personal life, including some sordid bits which he writes about with relish. Given he writes story songs, you’d expect he’d tell a good story, and he does. I was hoping to learn more about his songs, but Haggard instead focuses this book on his personal life. Interesting, but in the end I felt less of Haggard than I expected. Not everyone becomes a saint.

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Review: Don't Retire Broke: An Indespensible Guide to Tax-Efficient Retirement Planning and Financial Freedom

Don't Retire Broke: An Indespensible Guide to Tax-Efficient Retirement Planning and Financial Freedom by Rick Rodgers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These kinds of books on financing a retirement seem to consist of three things: facts, analysis, and exhortations. I like to think of those aspects as the encyclopedia, the professor, and the coach. Each book has a different mix of these aspects, and goes into different levels of each. This one started out heavy on facts. I almost gave up. The first third or so of the book is repeating the “rules of the road” for retirement investing, albeit at a deeper level than most books. This didn’t hold my interest much. But after those initial sections, the author started adding some useful analysis to the facts. There was a bit of coaching in there as well, but not a lot. This is better aimed at the serious retirement investor. As retirement finance books go, I would say this was a step beyond the mass-market business books, and would interest someone who has spent some time understanding the rules of investments and the common suggestions, and wanted a bit of a deeper dive.

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Review: Making Big Decisions Better: How to Set and Simplify Business Strategy

Making Big Decisions Better: How to Set and Simplify Business Strategy by Tim Lewko
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Author Tim Lewko starts his book on strategy with a story about how he starts his consulting gigs on strategy, by asking people to define what strategy is. The answers he gets are varied, and this discrepancy points up one problem companies have with strategy – they don’t agree what strategy is. Lewko starts his suggestions from that point, working with companies to come up with a common understanding of strategy, then diving in to creating strategies based on the business’ needs. Lewko uses this book to describe the process used in strategic consulting, and makes the case that his company does things differently. At its core, this is one of those books that describes the tools and processes used by a consultancy. Many of these kinds of books are thinly veiled advertisements for the author’s consultancy. In this case, Lewko does include more specifics that would allow the reader to actually use the tools and processes for their own strategy development, so this is better than many.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the consultancy here was founded by Chuck Kepner. I had many years using tools designed by Kepner for decision making, the famous Kepner-Tregoe Matrix. This book continues that legacy of tools and processes for decision making expanded to strategy making. I was also pleased with the discussion of blindly using “best practices”, often suggested by consultants, when a company hasn’t actually done the work to figure out if those “best practices” have any relevance to the company’s situation. Reasonable advice.

There was one aspect of the book that I didn’t like, but I understand why the book was written this way. A large majority of the examples of strategy development do not mention the client’s name. Without knowing the name, you are feel like you are just being given a hypothetical example in that you can’t place the context of the business being described. This method of writing makes it harder to connect to the examples, but I suspect this reflects the anonymity required by these consulting customers. I would rather read about companies that I know and can relate to.

Overall, this book seems to be useful, especially for building strategies for small and midsized companies wanting to complete at least some of this work themselves.

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Review: Ruffian: Thoroughbred Legends

Ruffian: Thoroughbred Legends by Milton C. Toby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Ruffian” is one of the better written books in the Thoroughbred Legends series. Part of the reason could be the story of Ruffian’s life was short, coming to a dramatic end after only a handful of races. Of all the subjects in this series, Ruffian likely had the shortest career. There’s just less racing to cover, and no progeny updates that tend to fill a chapter in these books. At times, authors can take either of these topics to extreme, hurting the readability of the book. And Ruffian’s career is one of the most recent covered in this series. This means that there are plenty of sources, and many of the principals in her story could still be interviewed. The availability of sources and the short life of the horse allowed the writer to focus on different aspects than other books. For instance, this includes some detail on the first year of Ruffian’s life. Most of these books don’t have much to say on a horse’s first year, I suspect due to lack of sources, but weaning and early training are covered here. Also, detailed coverage of Ruffian’s final race and the efforts to save the horse’s life are included, giving this book more emotion than the others. A sad story, but a good overview of her life.

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Review: A Brief History of Seven Killings

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I listened to this on audio. There were a variety of voice actors that did the narration for the chapters tied to their characters. The variety helped to keep the characters straight, but there are a lot of them in this book, and it can get a bit confused as you listen. I found the narration was excellent, with a combination of American voices and Jamaican voices, many in heavy patois. If you have difficulty dealing with a variety of accents and slang, you will have difficulty at times here. I found it was worth the trouble.

What did I enjoy the most? Strangely, this reminded me of how “Ready Player One” put me in a nostalgic mood. Unlike that book’s trip to the Eighties, this had many heavy references to pop culture – American pop culture – of the Seventies. Throughout the book you are in the character’s heads, hearing their thoughts. And what did they think about? Clint Eastwood movies, “The Dukes of Hazzard”, and lots of disco. I found myself chuckling many times along the way, recalling how TV, movies, and music were really common culture back then.

Sure this is violent. Sure it has characters that describe their own death and after death (shades of “Lincoln in the Bardo”). The characters mostly aren’t nice, or perhaps a better way to put it is that they don’t have a lot of nice thoughts. But it is great storytelling, with many interesting hooks to keep you involved.

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Review: The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life

The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life by J.L. Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve a long history of reading books and blogs about financial independence and retiring early (often shortened to FIRE), including the authors’ own blog, which he has been publishing for years. It is rare now that I learn anything new from these books. The topics in this book are quite familiar. I don’t think I learned anything new here. But I’m not the audience Collin’s is after with “The Simple Path to Wealth.” Collins writes here for readers new to the concepts of financial independence, and for this audience he does a good job. His voice is pithy and opinionated, his advice pretty standard for modern investors, with topics like buying low fee index funds, the 4% rule for withdrawals, and the like. He focuses a lot on Vanguard. Overall, an enjoyable read with valuable advice for newbies – something I would recommend for a new college graduate, just as the author intended.

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Review: The Heart of the Deal: How to Invest and Negotiate like a Real Estate Mogul

The Heart of the Deal: How to Invest and Negotiate like a Real Estate Mogul by Anthony Lolli
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lolli combines the story of his personal and his business’ biography with some how-to tips on becoming a landlord and real estate expert. I found I liked the author’s personal story. He has a brash and vibrant way, and he tells his story well. The real estate advice was more run of the mill. Lolli’s experience is mostly in urban residential rentals, and that’s the focus of the book. Being from a small town and living in a suburb, the examples and advice didn’t always connect with what I am familiar with. For instance, the author mentions buying warehouses, manufacturing, and retail real estate in addition to residential, but doesn’t mention farmland. And he has a section on buying out renter’s leases, mostly on rent controlled apartments, which I haven’t run across before. I will say this section was eye-opening and had some great stories about how a landlord could make a positive difference in a renter's life. I liked this book. What I liked most was those stories about how he runs his business. I would read another book if he wrote it, and I will be on the lookout for his appearances on cable.

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Review: Reading the Silver Screen: A Film Lover's Guide to Decoding the Art Form That Moves

Reading the Silver Screen: A Film Lover's Guide to Decoding the Art Form That Moves by Thomas C. Foster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Like many people, after seeing a movie I am often drawn to learn more about how the movie was made, and how it made me feel the way it did. Be it a comedy or drama or something else, beyond entertainment, they beg many questions. I remember going to some talks about movies held by a local priest. I remember in those talks the priest said that everything in the movie was there for a reason, every shadow, every note of music, every product on a shelf in a scene. While I’m sure that’s overstating the case, people making movies are making the scenes, and they have control of many aspects, and can tell a story underneath the surface story. That’s what this book is about, at least in the second half. In the first half, Foster presents definitions of scenes, sequences, and so on. I didn’t find this part very interesting. After the definitions, Foster really meanders through the movies, examining many different aspects such as timing, music, color themes, and the like. For his examples, Foster uses many of the most popular movies of the past 50 years. I appreciated this, as I have seen many of these movies and could quickly grasp the concepts being presented. I found the audiobook interesting, like hanging out with a friendly guide.

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Review: Try Not to Suck: The Exceptional, Extraordinary Baseball Life of Joe Maddon

Try Not to Suck: The Exceptional, Extraordinary Baseball Life of Joe Maddon by Bill Chastain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As a Cubs fan and a converted Joe Maddon fan, I sure learned a lot about the Rays reading this book. I was in high school when Joe Maddon played single A ball with the local Angels affiliate. I didn’t attend any games that year, to my delayed regret. His playing career is covered pretty quickly – the reason being it was over pretty quickly. The book does spend a lot of time on his growing with the Angels and his days with the Rays. The Cubs content appear to heavily lean on interviews with Jon Lester, Jed Hoyer, and Theo Epstein, as well as news reports. The book does a good job of covering the way Maddon’s philosophy of coaching has changed over time, and how it expresses itself with slogan, theme days, and in conversations with the players and the press. He often breaks, or at least bends, convention, and manages through trust when he can. Maddon's research, his methods, and his outcomes would make an interesting Business/HR case study. And possibly a good Business Analytics case study as well, although that isn't covered in much depth here. Maddon is a very interesting character, and this really just gives a flavor of how he thinks. I look forward to future Maddon books more detailed and personal.

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Review: Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book purports to be about robots, and given the cover, with a blurry picture of a human, I assumed it would be about humanoid robots. That is but a small part of this book. In my work I always have to talk about the “march of technology”. What that means is that the solution you create today should be better than what you had yesterday, but it won’t be the best given the changes we’ll see by tomorrow. This is the idea behind this book, that technology is automating more work, in more ways, with more intelligence as time goes on. “Robots” is really a code word for “automation”, and that makes this a relatively familiar book. There have been many books about automation. For instance, “The World is Flat” illustrates the use of automated workflow processes to better do work. I would consider “Rise of the Robots” a follow-on to that book, updated, and with a broader target.

Once I understood this was more about automation using technology than purely about humanoid robots, I enjoyed the book. The book was divided into two main topics. The first described that march of technology, including stories about “traditional” robots, but also process automation tools like “robotic process automation” and workflow, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the like. Technology is getting better and can handle more processes, and no end to progress is in sight. The second topic was employment. Employment statistics and trends were used to show the increasing impact of automation on jobs. Overall, I found this an interesting survey showing where we are in the ongoing automation of jobs, as well as what this continuing march of technology means to jobs for people now and in the near future.

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Review: Why Not Me?

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An interesting voice, but I found this a bit forgettable. I haven’t actually watched any of the series Kaling is in, so I can’t tell if her real life persona is close to the characters she plays on TV. Given what I read here, I suspect she is quite like her characters. She seems down to earth, admitting to eating at McDonalds and liking it. My favorite bit was an epistolary chapter, told in email, of a teacher throwing a party. I think this was the only “fiction” part of the book, and I found it interesting and worthy of expansion into its own story. I could be convinced to read future Kaling books as a diversion from more serious stuff, but at this point I won’t go out of my way. My review of her first book fits well here – it’s a bonbon of a book.

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Review: The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies

The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason Fagone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found “The Woman Who Smashed Codes” to be very entertaining. My enjoyment keyed off of two topics, local history and the discussion of codebreaking. Roughly the first third of the book introduces a true character in history, Colonel Fabyan, and his compound in Geneva, Illinois. I have lived less than 10 miles from what’s left of his compound for more than 20 years and had never heard this story, and it was quite unexpected given the area. Fabyan had his own kind of “Wonderland Ranch”, with diapered monkeys walking the grounds, visitors including Presidents, three miles of trenches dug for soldier training, and a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Those grounds were used for different kinds of research, including what began as an investigation into the belief that Shakespeare was an invention of Francis Bacon but later became a hotbed of cypher codebreaking. The descriptions of Fabyan’s Riverbank Labs and the combination of odd and historically significant happenings there will ensure I visit the compound, now partly a park.

The main topic of the book was the life of the Friedmans, a husband and wife team hired by Fabyan as researchers, who later used the knowledge they gained searching for cyphers in Shakespeare to become world renown code breakers. The Friedmans leave Fabyan’s compound about a third of the way into the book, and head off to Washington, working the rest of their careers for the military, the FBI, the Coast Guard, and others. Given the secret nature of their jobs, their work paths didn’t often cross. This enabled each of them to independently drive cryptography and code-breaking as a science, and in use. Their working life included code-breaking during both World Wars as well dealing with organized crime. The sadness of their later life is also described. The biography aspects of this book were well done, and a big part of what made these subjects interesting was the sheer variety of work that they did. They were unique and ground-breaking, involved in the most interesting events of interesting times. True science heros.

The author also included short and simple descriptions of the different kinds of codes that the Friedmans were working on throughout their lives, culminating in the breaking of the German Enigma code machine. This was done in easy-to-understand language, which was a pleasant surprise given the complexities in the concepts. It never felt like a math class, although there is a whiff of statistics…

This is the second book by Fagone I have read. He is on my short list of non-fiction authors to watch for upcoming books. Well done.

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