Review: The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms by Vishen Lakhiani
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is another example of a book that is as much an advertisement for the author’s website and paid content as it is to provide some actionable ideas to live your life in a better way. Many, if not all of the suggestions I’ve read before in different books, and in fact the author quotes from some of these source books quite often. To the good, the author does interject personal experiences that are at times interesting. He also has an energy-filled writing style. To the bad, the author writes this in a way typical for stretching limited content, by repeatedly telling you what he will be covering in upcoming chapters. You end up hearing what’s coming up a few times before you actually get to it, and at times when you get to the meat of the ideas you are underwhelmed because it’s familiar. On the audio version of this book, the author narrates. You get his excitement, but the reading is unsteady, with some odd timing. I would consider reading more by this author, but would look to verify that it wasn’t advertising focused.

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Review: Clotel: Or, the President's Daughter

Clotel: Or, the President's Daughter by William Wells Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story was about as I expected but the writing was quite a bit different. Given the time period in which it was written I was expecting more flowery, Victorian prose. Instead, “Clotel” was written in a more straightforward style. And on audio, it came across sounding like a radio drama from the 40s. At times, the author started a new chapter with something like, “Recall that when we left Mary she was in disguise and travelling through territory dangerous to her.” I listened to the audio version of this book, and this kind of writing stood out. I found it comfortable listening, despite the content that had the expected level of tragedy and violence. The story itself was interesting in the situations depicted, although I found it a bit difficult to follow the character changes on audio. Reading might have helped in this regard.

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Review: Pantsdrunk: Kalsarikanni: The Finnish Path to Relaxation

Pantsdrunk: Kalsarikanni: The Finnish Path to Relaxation by Miska Rantanen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This moment’s “The Preppy Handbook”. A take off on Scandanavian living memes recently popular in books. This book was humorous in style but not in substance – I smiled at the title and at how the book was organized, but not so much at the actual content. (view spoiler)[ It is all about sitting in your underwear and drinking. All about it. And even more about it. (hide spoiler)] I listened on audio. Probably not the best choice for this book, given other reviews pointing out the positive aspects of the feel of the paper in the dead tree version.

Those Finns…


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Review: The Future

The Future by Nick Montfort
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Montfort tells a history of the future. Or, in other words, what “the future” meant to people over time. He does this in this short book by focusing on a few specific topics. One was the utopian writers from the last turn of the century. He covers how the future was portrayed in art, and in various World’s Fairs and other exhibits (like EPCOT). He describes the founding of hypertext and HTML and how that was an attempt to build a future. And he describes some future depictions in books of a more recent vintage, what I call “scenario planning fiction”. Given the shortness of the chapters, the author can only mention some specific examples and muse about their connection to society of the day and to the actual creation of the future, but if you are in the mood for these kinds of musings, you may find this of interest. I enjoy these kinds of books, and appreciated the smattering of examples and the comparisons and analysis. The book ends with a call to use the arts and media to create scenarios for the future. Makes sense. I suspect this would be even better with more length.

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Review: Down the River Unto the Sea

Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Many of Mosley’s books seem a little off kilter to me. I’m not positive why, but I’d say what drives that thought is that the main characters are quite manic in their internal thoughts, and the story lives in those thoughts. At times I wish there was more description of the environment, but that would change the feeling of the book, and given Mosley’s expertise in writing these kinds of novels, it would probably be detrimental. I guess I’ll leave the moody descriptions to James Lee Burke. Here, we live in Joe Oliver’s mind, a former cop who was framed and served time in prison, facing life changing violence and life changing reflection. And he continues that reflection here, always wondering if he’s become a violent person himself, always testing. That is the feel of this book. Like many of Mosley’s books, there’s a violently crazy sidekick that serves to keep our hero a step removed from the evil that pervades others within the book. And, also to formula, there is a daughter to protect, and a convoluted plot that doesn’t fully pull together. On reflection, this was about what I’d expect from Mosley, although perhaps somewhat darker. I enjoyed it in its familiarity.

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Review: Service Fanatics: How to Build Superior Patient Experience the Cleveland Clinic Way

Service Fanatics: How to Build Superior Patient Experience the Cleveland Clinic Way by James Merlino
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This doesn’t feel like a normal how-to book. Instead, it is mostly reflections of the author’s journey creating a customer satisfaction program at Cleveland Clinic and at other places where he has consulted. This seemed quite high level and anecdotal, without consistent recommendations coming out of them. One thing to keep in mind is that the author had strong upper management sponsorship of the satisfaction program. Without strong backing, I suspect the outcomes would have been drastically less interesting. Also note that, while the author has consulted at a number of organizations in different industries, a majority of this book is focused on the world of the hospital, with doctors and groups holding much of the political capital running the organization. Not every organization is comparable, and the suggestions may or may not apply. But overall, I am a sucker for good business anecdotes that illustrate common business processes in new ways. I found many of the anecdotes were good at illustrating the processes the author was promoting.

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Review: Exterminator: Thoroughbred Legends

Exterminator: Thoroughbred Legends by Eva Jolene Boyd
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I believe Exterminator was the earliest subject of a book in the Thoroughbred Legends series. Because of that, this book is quite different than the others. The times were different, and horse racing was a different kind of game than it became a few years later. In addition, as a gelding, there wasn’t the progeny to write about, which tends to consume a large portion of most of these books. This book makes up for that lack in spades, though, as the horse had (was it) 10 trainers, and raced in 100 (or 99) races. The horse also had an interesting owner who made his money on Swamp Root patent medicine, and who had some interesting practices. His constant fighting with Exterminator’s trainers reminded me of George Steinbrenner. I was surprised after completing the book and reviewing the horse’s record that he had as many wins as he had. These books focus on wins generally, but in this one, the non-wins seemed more plentiful and well written. I guess when you win 50 races it gets to be kind of common. This book really had an interesting lead character with the owner, and I found it entertaining. I liked the author’s book on Native Dancer in the Thoroughbred Legends series, and I look forward to reading author Boyd’s other book in the series about Assault.

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Review: Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan

Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan by Scott Simon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed parts of this, though not the parts I expected before I began reading. This book sat on my TBR pile of baseball books, as I had the impression that that was what this was about. But here, Simon interweaves personal stories of his family with stories of recent Chicago sports teams. And I found Simon’s family stories, and the sports stories where he is a character were more interesting than his perspectives on, for instance, Bull’s management during the winning seasons that were so long ago. I most enjoyed his descriptions of hanging out with some people who might be considered one step removed from athletic greatness – like family friend Jack Brickhouse, and Luc Longley, who Simon befriends and kind of becomes one of his posse members. Simon doesn’t appear to have the personality to be the kind to hang out with your Jordans or Pippens or Ditkas or Graces. It comes across as nerdy humblebragging. Overall, this was at its best when Simon talks about his family. The reportage on the Chicago pro sports teams of the 80s and 90s was a nice trip down memory lane for a Chicago sports fan, but was about what you’d expect from a reporter.

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Review: How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life

How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life by Kay Peterson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In reading this, it seems the author is offering up a rehash of Myers Briggs, but including the word learning in as many descriptions as possible. The author includes 9 “ways of learning”, some opposites of others, some overlapping others, with the thought that you prefer to act “to type” as a default but can modify your actions and thoughts to include the other ways in your decision-making process. The ways of learning, such as thinking, acting, and reflecting, (and which are illustrated on the book’s cover) seem to me to be the actions associated with a flowchart that a person might use while making decisions. I like an occasional reminder to think using a process, and this book worked as that, but I didn’t see the tie-in to learning. This is more a general guide to decision-making. It seems to fall in between books describing how people associated with a Myers Briggs type think and a decision-making guide. I could see where this kind of classification could be useful, but it seems one of many, while trying to be something else entirely. The classifications were not crisp, they felt mushy and over-simplified. Not my cup of tea.

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Review: Fat City

Fat City by Leonard Gardner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well written story of men in the boxing world based in agricultural California in the 50s or 60s. One boxer is a down on his luck veteran trying to get back into the game while sliding into despair, while the other boxer is young and shows initial promise, but is beaten down by the life. The other main character is the trainer who takes shortcuts while continuing to make his living working with these boxers with pedestrian dreams of victory. The story also follows some others, including a Mexican boxer with a long career and many bouts that shows the likely result of a “good” boxing career. It’s all depressing in the end, but the author teases the reader with hope, dangled just out of reach, then yanked away by the system. The author provides plenty of characters to measure against. A joy to read -- you can sense the quality of the writing and the skill of the author -- but ultimately depressing.

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Review: The Power of Cute

The Power of Cute by Simon May
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Academic riffing on the meaning of cuteness in culture. The book shows the difference in what cute means in American and European cultures compared to Japanese culture. There are definitions and conjectures about what it all means. Strangest point related to how cute is often one small step away from monstrous. Deeper than many a pop culture book nowadays, but more on theory and conjecture and less on the statistics and objective observations you’d expect in a pop science book. Once I got used to the intellectual level, I found it provided some interesting things to think about, though nothing notably prescriptive. The Princeton University Press audiobook was overwhelmingly British.

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Review: Al Capone's Beer Wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago During Prohibition

Al Capone's Beer Wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago During Prohibition by John J. Binder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The sheer volume of research that went into this book is amazing. The author constantly pulls in new people – criminals, kingpins, government officials, law enforcement -- often giving a paragraph or two description of the person and their connection to the story, and often followed by the details of their killing. It is numbing in volume. And buildings – you get cross streets addresses for many of the scenes of action, be it a gangland killing, a warehouse for illegal beer, a distillery, a brothel, or a hideout. And there are statistics, with ratios showing the ebb and flow of crime in the city and near suburbs. There was truly too much content here to make this a wholly readable and enjoyable book, but the author attempted to organize these facts into a roughly chronological narrative. I found the narrative did bounce back and forth in time too often to keep track, but I appreciated the attempt.

The author also included many, many interesting facts, thrown in to counter-balance the statistics that would otherwise overwhelm the narrative, sometimes with some personality. Talking about hoodlums visiting their Northern suburbs headquarters with their new machine guns: “They practice shooting targets there with a machine gun – and accidentally hit the occasional farmer.” I appreciated the depth of reporting, including organized crime before the beer wars of the twenties. There is also in-depth coverage of historic brothels throughout the city, as well as city politicians. Having lived in Chicagoland for 30 years, I found the details of the addresses interesting, not realizing the historic uses of some of the real estate that I have passed by every day. I listened to this on audio, and I could almost hear the voice of John “Bulldog” Drummond, local reporter who specialized in organized crime stories for decades. The narrator had a bit of his cadence.

Overall, likely a very good reference work, and a good narrative of Chicago organized crime from Capone’s 1920s and before.


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Review: Got 'Em, Got 'Em, Need 'Em: A Fan's Guide to Collecting the Top 100 Sports Cards of All Time

Got 'Em, Got 'Em, Need 'Em: A Fan's Guide to Collecting the Top 100 Sports Cards of All Time by Stephen Laroche
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of my favorite books is the “Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book”. It is a snarky walk down memory lane by the author, ruminating on things like whether Sal Maglee always had 5 o’clock shadow, and what makes a real baseball name. It illustrated these discussions with pictures of vintage baseball cards that so you could easily understand what they were talking about. It was very humorous. I was hoping that “Got Em Got Em Need Em” was more of the same, but it didn’t quite match the aplomb of the earlier book. “Got Em” etc. was a different story. It was to show the top 100 sports cards and to describe why they were on the list. It seemed to me on finishing the book that the authors really named the top 100 athletes that had been featured on sports cards, so it was a kind of subjective popularity ranking. This covered all sports that had trading cards, so baseball players accounted for half or so. As this was a Canadian book, hockey was represented (and I my American mind over-represented), but the authors provided a number of explanations behind their choices. It was quite a personal book for the authors. The bulk of the book is the listing of the 100 cards, with writeups on each and a photo. The writeups covered the athlete’s story as well as any unique story about the card. You learn a lot about the trading card industry and its history reading this. The authors included a few interludes describing some card bloopers as well as each author’s favorite cards. I learned a lot and was entertained. While I have collected some sports cards in my day, my collection is small and mostly from the seventies and early eighties. I was disappointed that the only card I had that made this list was Dr. J’s rookie card. And while I have OJ Simpson’s rookie card, that particular OJ card didn’t make the list, but another one did… I enjoyed this quite a bit. You will absolutely receive an education on hockey while reading this, but if you like to know more about trading cards in this kind of format, it works.

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Review: Overclocked: More Stories of the Future Present

Overclocked: More Stories of the Future Present by Cory Doctorow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve read a couple of Doctorow’s novels and liked them, so thought I would also be enlightened by his short story collection. As with most such collections, some stories were hits and some were misses. I judge these by the story, and since we’re talking sci fi, by the worlds conjectured. Some of the stories seemed too weird to represent a future state, but were written to make a statement. I’m specifically thinking about “I, Row-Boat”. Not my favorite. I did enjoy “After the Siege” for its gritty take on future techno-enabled city siege warfare. I enjoyed “Anda’s Game” for the cute “turning on the head” of online work, which I suspect is pretty close to reality. And I got a bit of a thrill about “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” because I recognize the personality-type and can not imagine a whole bunch in the same place (it's kinda scary). I also appreciated “The Man Who Sold the Moon” as being one of those examples of how an organization can change the future, and how that organization can be driven by a few people with a vision. Kind of a Horatio Alger story, but instead of “rags to riches” we get “interesting idea to world-changing enterprise”. I’ll be reading more. I listened to the audio version with different narrators for each story. I found this a little uneven, needing to slow the playback on one story to maintain my understanding. YMMV.

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Review: Regulatory Hacking: A Playbook for Startups

Regulatory Hacking: A Playbook for Startups by Evan Burfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was expecting a slightly targeted version of a “how to start a business” book, but this exceeded my expectations. The author provides plenty of background into the unique issues with starting a business that deals with government regulations. He begins by providing a kind of roadmap to identifying audience and influencers, and he refers to this initial research throughout the rest of the book. The business examples he includes range from those selling directly to government to those selling to other businesses in a highly regulated industry, including international examples. I found the focus on the role of influence in many aspects of selling in a regulated environment or to government to be valuable. By the way, the advice offered in this book is not just for startups – it looks especially useful for existing companies selling a product into a new, “regulated” market, as the example of Kidde carbon monoxide detectors in the book shows. Well done.

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Review: Sidehustle: How to Start a Business for Less Than $1,000

Sidehustle: How to Start a Business for Less Than $1,000 by Tyler Basu
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

A strange book. This is really a compilation of three books by different authors. The books are all about entrepreneurship. These books approach “how to start a business” differently, so you do get some variety when you read this. One book is all about examples of businesses people have started, while the other books are more about the process , one kind of a how to book (with lots of detail that may not be pertinent -- mostly about internet based business using web-based presentations, content marketing, SEO, and the like) and one a business parable covering starting a business. If you have read any books about starting a business, this will all feel familiar. They are each reasonably good places to start. I’d consider each book to be similar to many others out there. Combining these books was somewhat questionable in value to the reader. I am not sure the reader needs to read these together, and I assume this was done to make money by repackaging existing books, giving them a new life. I was very surprised that there was little to no content related specifically to the title of this collection, “Side Hustle”. I don't know if it was even mentioned. Obviously this was named to take advantage of current interest in side hustles, driven by Chris Guillebeau and others. Yet the content is all about starting businesses, with nothing about starting businesses while working on a full time job. You’d expect discussion of integrating an existing job with the side hustle, and coming up with interesting ideas to make money, but this collection doesn’t really cover it. Bait and switch. Under a different and truthful name, this would be worthy of more stars. Entrepreneurs should understand the value of setting and meeting expectations.

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Review: How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don't Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up

How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don't Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up by Emilie Wapnick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The writer uses a low key style to talk about people that don’t focus long term on one career. I liked the way the author wrote, and I liked her organization around the different ways people approach variety – all at once, major and minor focuses, sequential, etc. Beyond that organization, and the repeated acknowledgement that there are many people that fall into these categories, I didn’t get much out of the book. I can see that some readers craving that acknowledgement that “they are not alone” will benefit with a read of this kind of book. It is relatively short for a career book.

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Review: Norwood

Norwood by Charles Portis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Norwood is the kind of fellow I knew growing up. You’d run across them at a minor league baseball game, or working at a carnival, or you’d see them walking 10 miles home because the car broke down and that’s what you do. They have stories, and they have --- not so much opinions as thoughts that they like to share. This story became a bit too annoying by introducing one eccentric character after another, ending with a midget, a chicken, and an army buddy that gladly pays Norwood back. All unlikely characters. I found this fun, but requiring of much effort to suspend disbelief.

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Review: Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas

Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas by John Pollack
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ah, analogies. This is like a survey class on analogies. The author describes the various uses of analogies and provides some interesting anecdotes about how analogies have been used and misused in a variety of situations. This was not a how-to book. The author doesn’t suggest how to use analogies, or answer usage questions (I always wonder using analogies in sales how to, or even whether to, discuss where the analogy I’m presenting breaks down – it’s not covered here). I was disheartened to learn that analogies are no longer tested for in college prep tests, and agree with the author’s worry that not focusing on understanding the power of analogy can make for weaker thinkers. The anecdotes here were well written and entertaining, and made this a nice book to listen to.

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Review: Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions

Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions by Alberto Manguel
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The author riffs about books, given an impending move requiring his large library to be packed. His ruminations cover the physical book, and also book’s meanings. He also delves into history and libraries and organizing. It’s like one of those late nights shooting the breeze in college with buddies, but with an intellectual with one thing on his mind….books. I found the audiobook pleasant as background, but it didn’t draw me in deeply. It had its moments.

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Review: The Constant Gardener

The Constant Gardener by John le Carré
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting in how this both, to use baseball terminology, hits home runs and strikes out. First, I must fall on my sword and admit that I listened to an abridged audio version of this book. I tend not to do that, as I find that often the abridgement hurts. It hurts the story, it hurts the flow. This was one of the problems here – the story was confused. At times, you couldn’t tell you had moved into what in a visually read book was a new chapter. Instead, you were often jarred into realizing you were reading about another characters perceptions, thinking you were continuing along with the previous character. This abridgement, unfortunately, has these problems. Sometimes, to the benefit of a book, an abridgement cuts out some storylines that aren’t necessary for the main story, and cuts out characters. Here, it seems like some plotlines were excised, and perhaps some introductory descriptions of new characters, but there were a large number of characters to keep track of here. The choices for this abridgement seemed a bit weak. This is surprising because the author seems to have been involved – he’s the narrator. As a narrator, le Carre was great. His pacing is methodical, his character voices are distinct, interesting, and funny when they were supposed to be. As for the story itself, I found myself intrigued by the way le Carre has moved beyond traditional spy stories while keeping his hand in. While a great example of an author/narrator’s art, the abridgement difficulties hurt this too much to whole-heartedly recommend.

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