Review: A Redbird Christmas

A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had read all of Fannie Flagg’s books but this one, saved for Christmas season. It has the quirky Southern characters, as she writes about in all of her books. But this one felt too manufactured. It would have made a better-than-average Hallmark Christmas movie if it were filmed, but that’s also the problem – it seemed like it followed one of those movies’ typical formula. Perhaps reading it out of season would have made it feel a bit fresher. Also, this was written as a short holiday book. Something felt left out, like character building and the creating of situational complexity that Flagg excels at, and that reflects real life. This felt like an abridgement. There was a climax, the kind you expect in a Hallmark Christmas movie, that I didn’t find fulfilling. For some easy reading, this will do in a pinch, but I prefer Flagg’s longer novels.

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Review: Our Souls at Night

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love the other books of Haruf that I had read earlier, and in reviewing them one aspect that stood out was their sense of place. You really feel the rural atmosphere, the most-ways declining some-ways adapting small town, the independent farmers, the acknowledgement that travel is required to go places. In “Our Souls at Night”, Haruf writes a different story. I didn’t get the sense of place as strongly here, but likely because it was a short book and something needed to be left out. His story contained the requisite pathos. For me, it made me feel sad for the characters facing their aging and their loss of spouses while they still have the freedom to be independent actors in their own lives. (view spoiler)[ And then, at the end of the story, when that independence is lost, you feel sad for that loss. (hide spoiler)] It can be an exceptionally sad story. Haruf wrote it so the reader can take solace in the raging against the light, as it were, between those life stages, but to my mind the sadness that bookends this story won out. If you want a story that elicits strong emotions, especially if you are concerned about aging, this isn’t a bad choice.

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Review: Leisureville: Adventures in a World Without Children

Leisureville: Adventures in a World Without Children by Andrew D. Blechman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Having just reached the age where I can buy a house in an age-restricted community, I approached “Leisureville” as a way to learn about what they were and what kinds of people populated them. I got that, but by an author who has an ax to grind. As an explanation for what the residents see in these communities, the author provides examples of how these places become community and home. A big part of the benefit of living in such a community appears to be planned activities, with many clubs and sports to choose from (yes, another mention of pickleball), and many recreational facilities, including restaurants and bars. And the author describes most residents of these communities as thriving there, with a few having different experiences and moving back. So for this level of reportage, I got what I was looking for, on a very interesting topic.

I also got what I wasn’t expecting, which was a diatribe against age-specific housing restrictions in the US. I hadn’t thought through the issues that these communities engender, and the author points out many, including limiting school expenditures even for support employees living in the area, reduced parks for the young, limitations on competition in terms of businesses, limitations on community governance, and so on. The author takes a stand strongly against these kinds of developments, and his opinions greatly influence his writing. At times, it seems he chooses to write specific stories in order to ridicule residents and to make his case. While I appreciated the descriptions of the communities and their histories, and I appreciated learning about the issues they cause in the area, the lecturing tone detracted from the message and made me question the validity of the writing. Think of this as a very long op-ed.


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Review: Round Table: Thoroughbred Legends

Round Table: Thoroughbred Legends by John McEvoy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is a kind of book formula for these race horse biographies in the Thoroughbred Legends series. This book breaks the formula in a couple of ways, leading to a more interesting book. The formula is to cover in some level of detail the subject racehorse’s ancestry, breeders, owners, trainers, jockeys, race history, and progeny. Most of the books in this series follow this list more or less to the letter. And most spend a lot of time discussing progeny, setting where the horse impacted racing’s future generations. This one was quite different in only spending a page or two on progeny. And it wasn’t like there isn’t a story there – Round Table seemed as prolific as the best horses in the series, with many offspring stakes winners to brag about. In “Round Table”, the story told is more in the racing. Another difference here is that the author included a personal anecdote at the beginning of the book and followed up on it at the end. The anecdote concerned a bookie he knew during the time Round Table raced, and how the bookie disliked the horse, but grew to become a fan when he related the horse’s workman-like personality to his own father’s. Nice story, and unexpected. Also unexpected was the use of many interviews of people that had something to do with Round Table, even sometimes without much of a connection. But they tended to be interesting comments. As a Chicago resident I found this very interesting, as many of the key races took place in Arlington and Washington Parks, which is kind of unique in this series, outside of John Henry’s story. All told, I believe this is the best of the series so far, as I’m about 3/4 of the way through.

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Review: How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation

How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation by Tim Calkins
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

I accidentally checked this audiobook out from my library’s Hoopla site, but I found it quite well done. I’ve read many business presentation books over the past few years, and most focus on the message. Here, the author spends as much time focusing on meeting logistics as the message. It was refreshing to read his advice in when to cancel a meeting – I had not seen other books cover this necessary political skill, and it is well described here. Another one of my hot buttons is team presentations. It seems most business presentations I’ve been involved with over the past few decades had two or more presenters, but the logistics of the dance of changing presenters is rarely discussed. Here, the author provides suggestions on limiting handoffs, and in making those handoffs as professional and quick as possible. The author also provides valuable advice in preparing for the “physical plant” of the room, testing lighting before the presentation for instance. About half of this book is traditional business presentation messaging advice, and the author quotes many of the books that I suspect many have read, like Nancy Duarte’s books, and Gallo’s book on Jobs’ presentation skills. Overall, I found this a valuable addition to the literature on business presentation, with good summation of state of the art from other books and a bonus focus on logistics and politics of presentations and meeting planning.

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Review: A Small Place in Italy

A Small Place in Italy by Eric Newby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The author describes buying, rehabbing, and living in a house in the Italian countryside. Making this easier for him is that he is a well-off Englishman who has married an Italian woman. Given the intricacies described of dealing with Italian workmen and becoming a resident, his money and Italian connection through his wife made things easier. But this is a kind of fish-out-of-water story that goes on a long time, as the author becomes part of the neighborhood. I enjoyed the quirky stories of a time gone by. The author’s most interesting observation was about some policemen he was travelling with could easily have killed him a few years earlier, when he was an Allied soldier and they were in the local militia. Things change, often for the better.

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Review: Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers

Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers by Charlie Louvin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This really wasn’t what I was expecting. I found it exceeded my somewhat high expectations, in a couple of ways. First, I’ve read a number of books by and about older rock and country stars recently. I expected this to be about the same – a well edited story that felt more like a ghost writer overworked the subject instead of letting the subject’s personality come out. In “Satan is Real”, named after a popular Louvin Brothers recording pictured on the cover, you get the feeling that you are reading predominately Charlie Louvin, with perhaps some minor clean up by an editor. This had an edgier personality to the writing as opposed to the laidback voice of many “autobiography” subjects. Another aspect of the book was the series of dichotomies. This is about a famous duet, mostly known for gospel recordings. Yet the book talks of knock down fights between the brothers and others, excessive drinking, woman chasing, pill popping, tantrums, and the like, more like what you’d expect from typical country or hard rock stars than gospel singers. Louvin even unexpectedly throws in a few choice cuss words, often near the end of his short chapters as if he wanted to save the invective until the end of his thoughts, as punctuation. There’s one short brother and one tall, one wild and one sober. They start picking cotton and end up one of the most successful duets in gospel and country music. One brother dies young, while the other writes the story of their lives. It is a surprisingly interesting story that would make a good movie or HBO-type series, and I’m surprised this hasn’t been done yet. The writing tends to be simple, and the author doesn’t go into any depth about his own life after his brother’s death, so there are bits that feel missing, but overall I found this a very good story. I had never listened to songs by the Louvin Brothers prior to reading this book, but I am a fan of what I’ve heard since.

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Review: The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past by John Lewis Gaddis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A historian analogizes the practice of writing history. It’s like making a map, where the mapmaker gets to decide what to feature, and how to measure, and level of detail. Later, it’s like something else. I found this interesting for a bit, but found the intellectual navel gazing, while very well written in non-academic prose, still couldn’t hold my interest beyond the first change of analogy. The style of writing was interesting enough that I would look for other books by this author on actual histories.

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Review: The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio: How a Simple Portfolio of Three Total Market Index Funds Outperforms Most Investors with Less Risk

The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio: How a Simple Portfolio of Three Total Market Index Funds Outperforms Most Investors with Less Risk by Taylor Larimore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Quite a short book laying out the main reasons the “three-fund portfolio” of the book title makes sense compared to investing in individual stocks or actively managed funds/etfs, or any other index funds/etfs. If you’ve read about index funds, say from any of Bogle’s books, you will see this is just a shortened version of one of his arguments for his funds. Fine for what it is, and fine as a reminder of why you invest in these funds, but the author interjects short testimonials within the text, making this sound too much like a marketing pitch. Without these testimonials, the book would be much shorter. Similar to some of the postings I've seen on Bogleheads and Reddit financial independence sites, and very similar to Bogle's own books.

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Review: The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture

The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture by Brian Dear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Five star books get that high ranking from me when they deliver an emotional connection. Sometimes it is because of a topic covered, at times it is the strength of the writing that forges that connection. Here, it is a linkage between a topic of great, career-building interest to me, computer history, with my own history. With an author that can mix these things together, creating interesting and varied stories along the way, you have a great book. I found “The Friendly Orange Glow” to be a great book, although I expect that opinion will match that of a very small cadre of fans. This book tells the story of the Plato system, used principally for education but later morphing into one of the first interconnected systems for electronic communications and gaming. Most of the book covers the creation of the system and its growth, mostly in the 60s and 70s. My personal connection was as a gamer in the early 80s at the home base for Plato, the University of Illinois’ CERL. I spent many nights (you could only play games after 10pm) in the CERL Plato classroom among the glowing orange touchscreens of the Plato system. Many early games are described in the book, from the perspectives of the game authors as well the players. I haven’t thought about these games in decades but this really brought back intense memories. I was interested to learn that the Plato system represented many developments that later became commonplace on the internet, including message boards, instant messaging, notes groups, shared screens, and the like. Authors on Plato went on to create popular computer games like Flight Simulator and Mah Jong and ubiquitous applications like Lotus Notes. This history-making computer system was enabled through a very open environment with try-anything leaders, always willing to do a demo. Much of the early system work was accomplished by interesting kids from the neighboring Uni High in the goings on, and later hiring them. The book follows the Plato system through its initial development at CERL and other colleges, through the years that CDC attempted to sell it around the world, and to its demise.

This is a great book for a detailed telling of the history of this computer system. The author provides stories of many of the players on the team building and selling Plato, and developing applications. This would be a good business book for those looking for an example of open door recruitment, as well as the use of non-traditional employees. And it provides a detailed example of what can go wrong in moving a research project to commercialization. I found the commercialization section the least interesting parts, though mainly because they were mostly about missed opportunities. Overall, an excellent computer history.

“The Friendly Orange Glow” was written to counter the lack of credit that the Midwest, in particular Illinois, gets in computer history. Here the Plato system gets credit for many innovations later popularized by various applications over the Internet. This is the second book I’ve perused that gave credit to the Midwest, and Illinois, for major advances in computers. The inventor of the computer says that he first wrote down his description of a computer in a bar in Rock Island, Illinois. Maybe there’s something in the water.


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Review: The Terranauts

The Terranauts by T. Coraghessan Boyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Boyle takes the concept of Biosphere 2 and builds it into what could easily become a TV series. We follow two inhabitants of the desert biosphere and one support worker, who all take turns narrating the story from their point of view. There’s danger, but it’s a kind of manufactured danger due to the cult-like sense of mission. There’s passion, but it revolves among the limited number of characters seeming to pair up in as many combinations as you’d get on a few seasons of Friends. There are surprising occurrences, but they are telegraphed. One character, or rather all characters, are schemers at some level, trying to get what they want. One is played for comic relief (and not surprisingly that was the character I most appreciated). So it was a lot like a typical cable series. While I appreciated the overall discussion on mission and the lengths people go to fulfill one, this didn’t come across to me as a very “literary” book, but more of a pop entertainment story. Enjoyable as such.

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Review: The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and Wow

The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and Wow by Joseph A. Michelli
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Zappos is known for their excellent customer service. In this book, the author, Joseph Michelli, investigates the company to determine how they have architected their company to provide this service. He breaks it down into 5 sections, but it can truly be focused on creating company process that enables stellar service, and creating HR processes that focus on benefiting the employee and the company. For instance, Michelli describes using anecdotes how employees have responded to customer issues, even those not involving the products being sold. An example is sending flowers to a customer who is dealing with returning shoes bought by her mother, who died before handling the return. An example of HR processes that Michelli highlights is the extensive employee training curriculum offered by the company, and the free use of business books from the company library. (Of course, since they are now owned by Amazon, I can understand the book benefit.) The book did bring up an issue that wasn’t covered in much detail – given this company has a single large office, with a second large office being built during the timeframe of this book, and with a large warehouse, geographically distant, the company would need to ensure their workers in all locations could deliver that high level of customer service. But it seemed from my reading that the training classes and many of the HR tactics to build a cohesive workforce (like invite-a-coworker-to-lunch prompting) generally require co-located employees. A minor miss, but perhaps this will be followed up on by other authors or editions. My favorite gleaning from this book is that Zappos openly calls themselves “weird”. And given many of the examples of employee parties, as well as company processes, that seems an apt description. It’s working for them.

Michelli includes questions within each chapter to help the reader consider adapting Zappos’ ways in their own companies. I enjoyed the author’s voice in this book, and appreciated the way the author categorized Zappos’ somewhat unique way of working. While I am not in a position in my company to enact these strategies and tactics, I can see how these descriptions could change an executive's thinking. Another excellent company dissection by Michelli.


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Review: Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results

Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results by Judith E. Glaser
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This really didn’t feel right as a book. It felt as if the author wanted to write a typical business communications book, similar to many that have already been written, but wanted to differentiate this book from the crowd. The choice was to add content that related in scientific terms what might be happening in your head and body when you are happy or when you make decisions. So you learn some science. But knowing this doesn’t really help you communicate, or at least if it does it isn’t explained here.

Strangely for a business communications book, as I read it I kept thinking of things my Mom would tell me, like “put yourself in other people’s shoes”, “people like hearing their own name”, and even “nobody likes to get yelled at”. This is a book that provides guidance that can be summed up with these kinds of platitudes. The author represented a person’s thoughts while communicating as passing through 3 layers:
- an “animal brain”, handling the basic needs, fight or flight, limbic brain.
- What I’d call a political brain, looking for angles to better a person’s standing
- What I’d call a cooperative brain, working for the greater good
The author thought that leader’s communication could be categorized as coming from one of these levels, with that coming from the top level tending to have better outcomes. I’ve run across this concept in many business communication and sales classes over the years, so it ended up being quite familiar. Adding to the familiarity, the book was written with noticeable repetition. Overall, I found this book a reasonable review, and I found the author's voice and choice of examples were good, albeit repetitive at times. But for me it did not tread new ground, and the added science seemed more for show.


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Review: Illinois State University

Illinois State University by April Karlene Anderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A historic photo book covering Illinois State University. The pictures are of three basic kinds. The first are pictures of people, mostly of the presidents of the university (and, because this is ISU, there’s a picture of basketball star Doug Collins). The second, and most common type of picture is the building picture. The history of the school is, in this case, broadly a history of the buildings of the school. The school has grown over the years, and many buildings were built, then torn down, to be replaced by other buildings that may also have been torn down. The various plans for additional buildings, plans abandoned over the years, are also documented. The third type of picture I would consider candids, pictures of students in their dorms or classrooms being the most common. Each picture includes a paragraph or two of descriptive text, and there are short essays starting each chapter. You can learn a lot about the history of the school. My daughter attends ISU, but I am not that familiar with the many school buildings. I found a weakness of the book is that it assumes you know when describing some of the demolished buildings where they were based on current buildings that replaced them. Including campus maps from the various eras would have helped this Normal visitor get his bearings. There was also very little on the college circus, which I also found surprising, although it is well covered in a separate book.

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Review: Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance

Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance by Bob Buford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A good life planning book. I found the thoughts interesting, but really the advice offered was focused on those that have been “successful” in their existing careers but felt that there was something more to do to have lived a complete life. As I consider myself a partial success, perhaps with schlub-ish tendencies, I felt this book spent a lot of time talking over me, to the golden boys that run large businesses. If you can put yourself in the target market’s shoes, you will read some good advice, with plenty of interesting examples of how people have taken a new path for their career when they’ve gotten beyond the value of their first one. The author describes ways to change your career to what you are interested in, as well as ways to support those interests while continuing existing jobs. This is very much a mid-career book – it is not aimed at questions of retirement. I found it of interest, similar to other career books but with a more spiritual/Christian tact, and focused on the winners.

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Review: Awakening Your Ikigai: How the Japanese Wake Up to Joy and Purpose Every Day

Awakening Your Ikigai: How the Japanese Wake Up to Joy and Purpose Every Day by Ken Mogi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The author describes ikigai, your reason to get up in the morning. He illustrates this concept by tying it in to five pillars, or aspects of ikigai. These are very simple traits, like starting small, and being in the here and now. They are so common that this seems like new age mantras, repeated in many different self-help books. Here the author includes some interesting examples, mostly from Japanese culture, but also including stories from many well-trodden sources: the book “Flow”, for instance. I liked the Japanese stories, but the bulk of the book felt too generic.

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Review: To Sir, With Love

To Sir, With Love by E.R. Braithwaite
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you’ve seen the movie, you know the story. The movie was pretty close to the book, really only adding Lulu and her great song, and downplaying the author’s romance with another teacher. I hadn’t seen the movie in a couple of decades, so I found the details of the book brought to mind many scenes. I really enjoyed this – it is a very good story on dealing with prejudice. I wish there was more to it, especially about Braithwaite and teaching. I wanted to read more about how Braithwaite learned to be a teacher, and about how he learned on the job. Here, this goes from bad to good with one anecdote.

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Review: The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Very readable history of the plague, with caveats. The author includes many personal stories from around Europe. The book is divided mostly by country, with descriptions of the advance of the disease over time in each area, along with details of many cities and individuals. This doesn’t read like an academic book. The disease becomes a character, invading new territory, lying in wait in others. Unexpected, but I thought this choice helped the long text. The author does have a problem with the word “however”, however. On audio, the narrator plays along with the word when it first is used, over emphasizing it with pauses before and after. But the narrator, like the listener, soon gets tired of the use of this word, so by the end of the book, the narrator is quickly saying it. It is used here most times unnecessarily, where an “and” would have made more sense. I’d guess “however” appears, unnecessarily, more than 100 times in this book, mostly in the second half. I also noticed some text seemed duplicated within a few paragraphs of where it is introduced. I’m not sure how that happened, but listening to this produced a case of déjà vu. I did learn a lot listening to this book, but perhaps a bit more editing would have made it even better.

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Review: When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pink describes a wide variety of research that relate in some way, directly or tangentially, to timing. You’ll find as you read through this book that pretty much everything that has been researched has a time element – things don’t happen unless time passes. That means the opposite of a book called “When” would be a book called “Is” with a bunch of definitions in it. So, given the wealth of research that could fall into a book with this moniker, Pink finds some entertaining topics, some with interesting research, some with stories that aren’t so well known. This is very much a pop science book, with Pink providing the humorous and knowing consistent voice collecting these writings into a mildly cohesive whole. I have a soft spot for pop science books that are readable, even though the information presented is obviously simplified, and often, like here with the audio version, presented without the backup information you would need to check sources yourself. There were statements made here that just seemed incorrect, more than the recent pop science books I’ve read/listened to. Or perhaps I’m just getting more cynical in what I believe. I did like that Pink broke out after each chapter a description of the research presented and suggestions on how a person could put that research into action in their own life. While much was obvious, it was a kind of tincture of self-help added to the book, providing something extra. Again, the book is a well-written example of pop science, and if you are interested in a relaxing non-fiction read, this is it.

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Review: Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction

Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction by David Norman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d say this is a short overview of the state of dinosaurs, not the “very short introduction” as promised by the series title. But it is good at what it does – describes the full history of dinosaurs as well as the history of dinosaur research, back to the 1800s. Most of the details covered, though, seem to be more recent, including discussion of feathers, the possibilities some dinosaurs were not cold-blooded, and the cause of their disappearance. I greatly enjoyed learning about the current thought in dinosaur research, with the discussion mostly high level but occasionally drilling down to specifics, especially concerning the author’s own research. The ending was a bit of a downer, reminding the reader that humanity is likely to face the same fate as the dinosaurs. Nice read, and it makes me want to read more about dinosaurs and more in this series.

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Review: Calypso

Calypso by David Sedaris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had a drive coming up and needed to pick an audiobook to start. It wasn’t a normal drive, it was driving my daughter back to college. And while normally that’s a two and a half hour drive, there was snow forecast, so I expected a good seven hour round trip, a lot of it in icy conditions. I chose “Calypso”. A big part of that choice was that David Sedaris can tell a story, and that’s what I needed for this long and involved drive. And I thought Calypso had the ring of Caribbean beaches, which would take my mind off of the ice and snow coming down. Ends up I was incorrect – Calypso is the name of a cat mentioned in passing in the middle of the book. Sedaris mixes hilarious stories here with occasional bits of serious remembrances of his deceased mother and sister. I found his mixing of the serious and humorous to be very well conceived. The timing was good. My favorite remarks were about the effect of the use of a Fitbit device on his actions. The Fitbit story is an early one, but it comes back again and again. This audiobook has a mix of audio sources. Most stories are done by Sedaris in studio, but a few are recorded by Sedaris live in concert. I found those live ones with audiences my least favorite, but still funny. His choice of topics delves on the disgusting at times, which weren’t my favorite stories. Overall, though, a very entertaining choice.

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