25.11.18

Review: Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery

Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery by Håkan Nesser
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting Scandanavian mystery in that the police are optimistic on solving the case without much of anything to go on, while wasting time, drinking wine and playing chess. In the few Scandanavian mysteries I have previously read, there's much brooding, a dark and dreary environment, and general pessimism until optimism is warranted. This is a change. I found the interactions, especially among the police, to be interesting to read, and I enjoyed the few humorous bits, mostly showing people who are good at their jobs but who are also jaded. The case itself was a bit gory. I look forward to reading more in this series.

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Review: The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace

The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace by C. Richard Weylman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Simple, short book that says you need to meet customer's needs, not trumpet how good you are. This is motherhood and apple pie in terms of the way many people think, but not always in how they approach business. The author gives examples of companies advertising how popular they are, but not advertising how the meet a customer's needs. Whoops. Although this wasn't anything new to me, it was a good reminder of what to focus on when working on marketing and sales, and was well written with many examples.

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Review: Vocal Leadership: 7 Minutes a Day to Communication Mastery, with a Foreword by Roger Goodell

Vocal Leadership: 7 Minutes a Day to Communication Mastery, with a Foreword by Roger Goodell Vocal Leadership: 7 Minutes a Day to Communication Mastery, with a Foreword by Roger Goodell by Arthur Samuel Joseph
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Authors of books that purport to teach the reader something that also happen to offer consulting or training in the same topic have to walk a fine line. They likely make more money on their day-to-day work than on sales of their book, so they often use the book to introduce the concepts but don’t provide an entire package that would allow the reader to fully embrace the topic without paying for additional courses or consulting. I’ve read quite a few books recently that have provided a lot of value in terms of teaching how to accomplish something without requiring hiring the author to help, and I tend to reward those books with better evaluations. Here, this isn’t the case.

The author provides some very basic processes to work on vocal strength. He does this in two ways. First, there are a series of vocal exercises that he describes. This sounds good, but was a very small part of the book. I listened to this book’s audio version, and that likely helped me understand exactly the kinds of vocal sounds that were for practice. Think Eliza Doolittle’s elocution lessons in “My Fair Lady” – most of the exercises were similar. They were also similar to the exercises I learned in Junior High Chorus. Again, this was only a small part of the text. The second way to “embrace your vocal mastery” was to follow a set of rules. You’ve likely heard many of these rules from your parents. Stand up straight. Breathe. Project when you speak. These rules might have some value, but seemed quite generic.

Most of the book, unfortunately, related anecdotes about “vocal mastery”. I enjoyed some of these, including the author’s retelling of the story behind “The King’s Speech”. But many of the anecdotes highlighted the author, and there were enough of these to make the book feel like a long written advertisement for the author’s classes. The classes are mentioned quite often, so you understand that they are the purpose of the book. In fact the structure of the book is such that the rules and exercises content are surrounded, before, after, and in between, with what seems to be advertisement. This isn’t bad in and of itself depending on the actionable content, but here the actionable content felt a bit lacking. The rules seemed too generic, the exercises seemed incomplete. Good for a taste of elocution lessons, but you’ll need to wade through a lot of sales pitch.


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24.11.18

Review: When Strangers Meet

When Strangers Meet When Strangers Meet by Kio Stark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I was growing up, I realized my Mom’s hobby was to go to the Hardees at the mall, buy a cup of coffee during non-lunch hours, and sit in a booth with a good view of the mall in front of Montgomery Wards, and to watch people. She rarely talked with strangers, though, and I grew up with that as a base. Going away to college I found myself talking to strangers quite often, and I have kept this up ever since. I was happy to see the suggested exercises in this book really starts with my Mom’s people watching, and continues with some things that I have done, and some things I’ve never even thought of doing (like pretending I am lost and asking someone to draw a map). I found these suggestions quite interesting. I liked the anecdotes presented here, and I appreciated the brevity of the book and of the message. I think being open to interactions is important and valuable in many ways. Worth some thought.

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Review: Chaos Monkeys Revised Edition: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

Chaos Monkeys Revised Edition: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley Chaos Monkeys Revised Edition: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley by Antonio García Martínez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fun and inciteful book on the state of startups, morphing with a buyout into a story about working within a FANG. Great business anecdotes, from working with Y Combinator, working with VCs, leaving gainful employment with a declining tech company, getting sued by same former employer, shopping and selling the startup, and working for Facebook until not working for Facebook. Along the way, the author explains how the internet makes money with ads, and how ad capabilities are becoming more “weaponized” through the use of additional user data. In other words, he explains how better ad-serving technology competes with user privacy concerns, from the ad savvy technical side of things. I found some of the explanations very good, and some were confusing, but in total I found I learned some things on modern internet advertising that I hadn’t realized were happening. This is not a how-to book. This is more a business memoir. Very interesting story. I enjoyed the flow. The author was a bit into himself, using the book to lay claims to events, actions, and thoughts along the way. This added interest to the story when presented in small bits, and the author mostly did this, but some passages were a bit too self-serving for my taste. Despite those bits, I found the book overall to be a very nice overview of the “career flow” hitting a lot of typical technology employers – the declining tech, the startup, and the unicorn. This is certainly the dream of many workers in technology or marketing, and the author illustrates how this did happen for him, sharing both good and bad.

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22.11.18

Review: Mister Monkey

Mister Monkey Mister Monkey by Francine Prose
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is like a chain of related stories. At times, the chain is a bit tenuous, pulling in a character based on as loose a relationship as sitting next to another character in a restaurant. But as the book continues, you start to see additional relationships pop up, and the author does a wonderful job of showing this inter-relatedness. The story starts a bit oddly, describing a local theater performance of a play based on a children’s book called “Mister Monkey”, a performance that doesn’t go as well as planned. The story then jumps through different characters’, related to the immediately previous characters. As you read toward the end, you realize the relationships have been made with other characters, circling back in effect. There’s an ending that can be best described as “nice”. I liked the book and appreciated the effort to tie these characters together while making them real. I would read more by this author.

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21.11.18

Review: Monologue: What Makes America Laugh Before Bed

Monologue: What Makes America Laugh Before Bed Monologue: What Makes America Laugh Before Bed by Jon Macks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book by a former Jay Leno Tonight show head writer quite a lot. I was thinking I might end up rating it a 5 star book. But as I got into the second half, I realized how dated some of the material was. Late night monologues are often politically based, and some of the jokes retold were very dated. If you want to relive some of the punchlines of the late 80s through the early 00s, this is quite a good book. The author tells his own story, coming from the political world, writing ads and speeches, and turning that into a job writing jokes. You get some of the background of that kind of work, and you get a history of late night monologues back to before Jack Parr. His WC “joke” is included in its entirety. While most of the jokes retold are from Leno’s Tonight Show, the author includes many stories and favorite bits from other late night hosts. If you are interested in reliving past late night monologue jokes, are of a certain age to understand the for-the-time topical humor (say 45+), and are interested in the behind the scenes work of a joke writer, this is perfect for you. If you just want the best of Leno’s monologues, this is also a good bet.

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19.11.18

Review: Affirmed and Alydar: Thoroughbred Legends

Affirmed and Alydar: Thoroughbred Legends Affirmed and Alydar: Thoroughbred Legends by Timothy T. Capps
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As I read my way through the Thoroughbred Legends series, I sense a bit of a formula for these books about great racehorses. This one breaks the mold in a couple of ways. First, it covers two horses instead of just one. There's good reason for this - these horses were tied together by age and by results. Second, possibly because this covers two horses, the race coverage is not as detailed as in other books. Here, at times, you get just a paragraph or two describing some of the lesser races. I found this refreshing. Instead of filling space describing less consequential races, the author chose to cover the head-to-head races and the races with unexpected outcomes a bit more. Good choice. Thirdly, this one spent about a third of the pages describing the progeny of both Alydar and Affirmed, to really make the case that while Alydar was the lessor racer, he was the better sire. This was quite overwhelming in terms of listing offspring by season, and in many cases drilling down (and up) the family tree to make a point. The point was made, but with an almost Biblical listing of names that wasn't all that fun to read. That dropped my score down. Perhaps a graphic would have done a better job here. Beyond that choice, I found this one of the better ones in the series, although I already was an Alydar fan, and had read of Calumet's issues and Affirmed's demise in Ann Hagedorn Auerbach's Wild Ride: The Rise and Tragic Fall of Calumet Farm, Inc., America's Premier Racing Dynasty .

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13.11.18

Review: On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance

On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A history of the Harlem Renaissance. You expect to read about how the Harlem area became the home to many Black Americans, and here you get a history of the circumstances and the landlords who made this possible. You expect to read about the culture, and here you read at length about the writers and the musicians who were center stage at this time. And you don’t expect to read about basketball. But it ends up Abdul-Jabbar makes a good case that basketball should be part of that story. He tells of the beginnings of professional basketball in Harlem, sponsored by large ballrooms and often played on the slick ballroom floors between band sets. He tells of the Rens and the Original Celtics, and the Chicago team called the “Harlem Globetrotters”. I found the basketball stories to be very interesting, and mostly new to me. As a pop history book, covering a lot of areas I am interested in, I enjoyed this.

Abdul-Jabbar also interleaves his own story, growing up years after the events portrayed as the Harlem Renaissance, and in a nearby neighborhood. He tells how the people and events of the Renaissance impacted him, often through meeting some of the people mentioned later on. Abdul-Jabbar also claims to be a historian based on writing prior books about his playing days. Seems like a bit of a reach, but OK. I enjoyed this book more than I expected, and will look for more of the same type by Kareem for light reads.


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12.11.18

Review: The Old-Time River Rats: Tales of Bygone Days Along the Wild Mississippi

The Old-Time River Rats: Tales of Bygone Days Along the Wild Mississippi The Old-Time River Rats: Tales of Bygone Days Along the Wild Mississippi by Kenny Salwey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Salwey writes about a couple of river rat families he knew growing up, back quite a few decades ago, as well as a couple of dogs he had and a couple of family stories from when he was young and living on the hills over the Mississippi. I chose to read this book because I grew up on a hill over the Mississippi a couple of hundred miles downstream from the lands Salwey talks about, but I had noticed the same kinds of folks. I was often called a river rat when visiting other high schools as a fan of our school’s basketball team and I didn’t know what that meant. Ours was one of only two rural school districts to encompass both the Mississippi banks and the Rock River, so there were plenty of river rats in the area. But I lived on the hill. Salwey’s book explains the difference in the people, in part based on the difference in the land and in how the people earned their livings. River rats earned their livings through the river, heavily focused on fish. Hill people were more the typical farmers. Salwey choses some real characters to illustrate river rats, and there are some good anecdotes about them. He also includes good anecdotes about his family and neighboring farmers threshing, or thrashing as he calls it. This must be from before the Second World War. Salwey also includes some stories about memorable dogs he has owned, which fit right in. This is a nice taste of the past, giving these rural folks from upriver of Dubuque and downriver from LaCrosse (sometimes called the Driftless) a voice from a simpler time. I’ve heard similar stories from family from around my part of the River.

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Review: Born to Walk: The Transformative Power of a Pedestrian Act

Born to Walk: The Transformative Power of a Pedestrian Act Born to Walk: The Transformative Power of a Pedestrian Act by Dan Rubinstein
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The author mentions in this book using Google to look things up. As I read through this book of walking and noticed the sections, including sections on the physical and mental benefits of walking, cops walking a beat, walking (more marching) in protest, and more, I found myself wondering if the author had just googled the term “walking” and categorized the results, writing parts of the book based on how popular the categories were. This is a broad overview of the term “walking”, and the sections do not congeal. Perhaps “walking” is too loose a connection between these topics. I think a focus on walking as a method of civic transformation, like the subtitle hints at, would have been enough of a topic to make a fine book. This just reached a bit too far. I enjoyed the voice of the author, and would consider reading more of his work.

I listened to this in the Booktrack audio edition. In this version, the book narration was accompanied by light background music and occasional appropriate sound effects. For instance, when quoting cops walking a beat, car horns and other city traffic noises were mixed in. I had mixed feelings about this experience. I actually enjoyed the sound effects and most music. I felt it raised the feel of the performance to be similar to listening to a well done NPR radio story. However, I noticed a few times while listening in the car that the choice of music was more of a repetitive industrial noise than music, and more than once I thought I had brake problems, or was dragging a metallic object, because of that noise. I recommend the Booktrack folks consider where their listeners tend to be when listening, and try not to send the wrong message with their additions to the monologue.


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Review: What Is Your What?: Discover the One Amazing Thing You Were Born to Do

What Is Your What?: Discover the One Amazing Thing You Were Born to Do What Is Your What?: Discover the One Amazing Thing You Were Born to Do by Steve Olsher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have read so many “find your purpose” books, I wonder why I keep going. But I know. It isn’t reading the book, it’s actually doing the work that, purportedly, help you find your purpose. And I don’t have a good track record at doing this work. So I continue, and I notice the differences in these types of books. This is one that is more of a workbook, with lots of fill-in-the-blank sections to work through. I actually found the exercises to be more thorough than many of the books I’ve read, so this was a good thing, but there are also plenty of blanks to fill in, which all require a lot of reflection. Hence more work.

I liked this book. It was ambitious. It had more steps than I was expecting. Although it was set up as a workbook, it’s hard cover – you don’t see that combination often. The font was a size smaller than I expected, and the text covered more of the page than I’m used to, with smaller margins. It felt like the author had a lot to say and wanted to maximize that paper. I wish he had used higher quality paper, though, instead of the typical disposable workbook paper that yellows quickly. Nevertheless, I found the design of the book was interesting and lead to me liking it more that I otherwise would have expected.

Overall, I found this one of the more interesting examples of the “find your purpose” genre.


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Review: Biopunk: Solving Biotech's Biggest Problems in Kitchens and Garages

Biopunk: Solving Biotech's Biggest Problems in Kitchens and Garages Biopunk: Solving Biotech's Biggest Problems in Kitchens and Garages by Marcus Wohlsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very enjoyably written set of articles on home-brew biology as it exists in the early 2010s. Reading through this book felt like reading a long pop science magazine focused on this topic. There are lots of anecdotes about the people doing this. It actually starts off quite tame, describing people building diagnostic medical tests to test their own families and building inexpensive equipment or finding expensive equipment for sale second hand. Only as you go on in the book do you see DNA manipulation and the like. The book ends with a discussion of the risks involved.

I just attended a TEDx conference that included a speaker running a local biohacking lab. The talk focused on what they could do, how they share information with other researchers, and how they were using equipment that was home built for cheap or purchased for a fraction of what the functionality cost just a few years ago. Many of the advances talked about came about after this book was written (its copyright date is 2012). The cause of the strength of this area of “non-corporate” research, according to the speaker, is the continued lack of regulations. This continues to be a fast moving area, and on that will get more interest from the general public as time goes by and as “things happen”, good or bad, based on this research. “Biopunk” remains a good introduction.


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10.11.18

Review: Robicheaux

Robicheaux Robicheaux by James Lee Burke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have listened to the audio version of most of James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux books, narrated by Will Patton. Patton has become the voice of Dave Robicheaux for me, as well as the voice of the bayou country as described by Burke, in a way that can be called atmospheric, if that atmosphere is humid, hot, and kinda menacing. According to Amazon “Look Inside”, the word “mist” shows up 14 times in this book, mostly relating to seeing people appear or disappear. Moody. Robicheaux is having a bad time, more than normal, in this one, making this one of the more depressing stories in the series. The story is very similar to other Burke mysteries, as many of the recent books have seemed. But that doesn’t bother me yet, since what you are getting here is a more than plot, it is a mood that Burke knows how to impart very well. To the good is seeing Dave fall apart but hold it together enough to finish the story – there’s no grave injuries and superhuman recovery so prevalent in recent Robicheaux stories. Also, Clete is well-written comic relief (and is well performed by Patton). And you run across some inside jokey bits where you can sense Burke is winking at the reader, one bit playing off of earlier Robicheaux novel titles. I found this a refreshing entry into the cannon.

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7.11.18

Review: The Capitalist Code: It Can Save Your Life and Make You Very Rich

The Capitalist Code: It Can Save Your Life and Make You Very Rich The Capitalist Code: It Can Save Your Life and Make You Very Rich by Ben Stein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have an Uncle that I knew was an investor, along with his full time job as a draftsman. He owned stocks, and he was a partner in a fast food place in Fort Leonard Wood. He’d occasionally give my Dad old copies of Value Line, and I read those voraciously when I was in high school. I understood, in part from listening to my Uncle and my Father talk, that investing was the way to go. But my Uncle liked to invest in particular stocks, hoping to beat the market. Fast forward to today’s investment landscape shared on social platform Reddit, with the FIRE folks, interested in gaining financial independence. These folks have done the research, and seen the value of investing not in individual shares but in broad swaths of the market in low cost ETFs or mutual funds, diversifying away the risks of individual stocks and putting faith in the power of the market and compounded growth. If you mix my Uncle with the philosophy of FIRE, you get Ben Stein’s book “The Capitalist Code”. Lots of basic advice, lots of personal anecdotes. A fine introduction for a young person beginning investing. For those already dipped in this philosophy, this is just a nicely written, fun (or is the word "droll"?) reminder. And you get to relive a little of “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off” in the beginning.

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Review: The Magic of Tiny Business: You Don't Have to Go Big to Make a Great Living

The Magic of Tiny Business: You Don't Have to Go Big to Make a Great Living The Magic of Tiny Business: You Don't Have to Go Big to Make a Great Living by Sharon Rowe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you’ve read a lot of Inc magazine articles, or other books are starting your own business, you will find this book trods familiar ground. The focus was on operating your business, not on the initial sparks of creation. So you learn it's not all magic. Then you learn about the "tiny" side of the title. The focus was also on “tiny business”, but while some of the book is about those tiny businesses you tend to call side-hustles, much of the book is about businesses that are larger. The book is short, so it has the feel of an extended magazine article or series. The author includes many anecdotes about her own experience of growing her business, an early eco business, which makes this interesting (although a bit dated) and more than a how-to book. A nice, short reminder of how to think about problems as you grow your small business.

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6.11.18

Review: Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street

Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street by William Poundstone
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some interesting stories revolving around the science of information, investments sometimes using this science (and sometimes not), and the law revolving around RICO. These things fit together loosely, and the author does a good job of tying stories back to the scientists described early on in the book. But there is a lot of ground covered, in many directions. This is a book of stories related to information theory, not a how-to book. I did not pick up on enough science to be useful for my own investing and gambling, but this book does give you the basics on how it can be applied, and whets the appetite for learning more. I thought the variety of stories helped the narrative – I wasn’t expecting Rudy Giuliani to make such a large appearance.

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Review: Foundation

Foundation by Isaac Asimov My rating: 3 of 5 stars I decided to read the Foundation novels in chronological order, and before this...