Review: Swan Peak

Swan Peak by James Lee Burke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One more and I’ve caught up on Dave Robicheaux to date. I’ve enjoyed this series, especially on audio with Will Patton narrating. But perhaps in having listened to more than 20 of these books, I have become a bit jaded. I didn’t find this one as excellent as most. First, instead of taking place in humid rural Louisiana, this one takes place in Montana. In the Louisiana books, the locations really become like a character in the story, and you get to where you can feel the oppressive heat, taste the spicy food, and you expect the Southern accent in conversation. But his Montana stories are much more non-descript. The boring locations didn’t help the story.

The other major difference was the way the story was structured. I recall Burke’s other stories felt very connected. Here, I noticed a number of scenes, some many pages in length, but often without connecting detail. You would be following a story about Robicheaux visiting a crime location, then the next scene he shows up somewhere entirely unexpected. You don’t know how he got there, how much time has gone by, what the intention is, the basics. You end up having to figure it out, often without much help from Burke. It felt like this was the result of a bunch of writing exercises to develop scenes. Or worse, it felt like one of those excessively abridged audiobooks where you know you are missing events and motivation in order to fit the story on two cassettes. Ugh.

And speaking of scenes, this was yet another of Burke’s books that included the casino business and a movie star, although it felt like he just was ticking these elements off of a story checklist. There are casinos and movie stars in a majority of these stories, odd since they aren’t based in hotbeds of moviemaking or legal gambling, but there you go.

Despite the lack of connective tissue between scenes, those scenes are written very well. Both maddening and enjoyable in turns.

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Review: Lincoln's Gift: How Humor Shaped Lincoln's Life and Legacy

Lincoln's Gift: How Humor Shaped Lincoln's Life and Legacy by Gordon Leidner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What did I learn in this book? I learned that Lincoln liked to reply to a comment or question beginning with “That reminds me of a story…”, and that story was often about a fellow in Springfield. From this book, you get the idea that Lincoln was less of a stand-up comedian, and more of a Garrison Keillor type, a fellow who liked longer stories about people that did odd things, often to illustrate a point or to point out a human frailty. Interesting, but quite repetitive. And don’t expect to learn any jokes here to tell your friends. These tend to work for politics, law, and debating. The author tells Lincoln’s life story, dishing out the humorous (and sometimes not so humorous) stories that he told. I most liked hearing (on the audiobook) the pithy things he said while younger.

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Review: Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I occasionally feel the need to read a motivational book, with the intent to renew my spirit. That sounds new-age but it is more pedestrian. I read to find things that hit me at just the right time. It’s great when what hits me is a big concept that takes pages to read about and allows me to simmer while learning. But most often, it’s the turn of a sentence that lodges in the memory and gets mulled over. Which leads me to this book. Kleon has written a book intended to be motivational to creative folks. He divides his book into 10 ways to staying creative, including thinking about the seasonality of what you are doing, dealing with work by days, and more. I found the organization and topics fresh compared to most of what I’ve read recently. Kleon includes a some text on the topic that he authored, as well as a number of quotes and text snippets, pictures, and handwritten charts/chapter headings. And he keeps repeating pictures of pages of other books mostly blacked out, leaving just a few words that form a sentence on the subject at hand. Not the best use of space. There’s a lot of white space. I enjoyed the writing. The pieces Kleon wrote were short, a good length for what he is doing here. But I most enjoyed his selection of included quotations. I’d pick up another of Kleon’s books for a quick motivational jolt.

I won a copy of this book in a contest from Kleon's publisher, I believe. This did not influence my review.

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Review: A Most Elegant Equation: Euler’s Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics

A Most Elegant Equation: Euler’s Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics by David Stipp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s math. And it’s history. And philosophy. But mostly math.

I found the math descriptions well simplified. I thought I would get a lot of math knowledge out of this book. Or at least I would be reminded of a lot of math from my courses decades ago. There was a little faint recognition. I appreciate the job the author did in jogging my memory on e. But I found the history, especially the story of Euler, more interesting here. When I reflect on this book a week after reading, I most remember not the math, but the Euler stories, especially about his family. I noted while listening to this audiobook that the last quarter or so was more philosophical, about the meaning of beauty. This discussion was a bit overdone and didn’t add to the story as much as I would have hoped. Go for the math, stay for the history.


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Review: Last Night at the Lobster

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I haven’t worked a restaurant job, my friends have, and I remember helping out at closing time with the reward of drinking a beer with the rest of the crew in the closed dining room afterwards. I’ll remember the casual camaraderie with people I might not have ever talked to before. It wasn’t like the work friendships of an office job, it felt more real. O’Nan captures this feeling. In this case, the restaurant is a chain restaurant, Red Lobster, and this is the story of one on its final day. The style was interesting, kind of a faux documentary following around the restaurant manager through his day, but with incredible detail of events and thoughts. It was a lot like O’Nan wrote a book to go with a documentary on that restaurant closing, following the manager around, revealing his inner thoughts through a kind of documentary-style monologue/voice-over. I could imagine this on Front Line or on HBO. I enjoyed the style. The novel is somewhat short, so that also felt like documentary-length. There was nothing extraneous. Nicely done.

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Review: Giving It All Away...and Getting It All Back Again: The Way of Living Generously

Giving It All Away...and Getting It All Back Again: The Way of Living Generously by David Green
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you are looking for the story of how the owners of Hobby Lobby fought healthcare regulations on religious grounds, taking the lawsuits all the way to the Supreme Court, this is the story that begins this book. You learn of the life of the author, David Green, growing his hobby empire and building a family run business. Beyond the lawsuit story, most of this book is focused on the history of Green’s Hobby Lobby business and on how Green involves his family in the running of the business. I read a lot of business histories, and this was not particularly revealing in the business aspects. But on family ownership, Green grows his business to involve three generations in the business, from working in the stores to management to board membership and voting on strategic issues. It was a story you only hear about in some of the large family-run businesses. I read this book more to see a personal story of gratitude and philanthropy, given the title. It isn’t that. Good for background and an example of family business involvement, but of limited repeatability if you aren’t growing a big business and a big family to go with it.

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Review: Fools Rush Inn: More Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom

Fools Rush Inn: More Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom by Bill James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Bill James is fun to read. Personal opinion, based on his pithy comments on baseball and his use of numbers to wrestle out a story. This collection was more hit and miss. There are a few non-baseball opinion pieces, kind of funny, but kind of the quality of small town newspaper columnist. The baseball pieces are a mix of long, research intensive writeups and shorter baseball stories. James is at his best with the math driven baseball analysis, and my favorite here was his attempt to categorize baseball into different eras. Categorization is something I'm interested in for work, so I found this quite informative. I also appreciated his take on managers in the Hall of Fame and his estimation of the chances of current managers to make it. Fun, but not as much as his earlier collection.

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Review: The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated

The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated by Helaine Olen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For a short audiobook on simplifying personal finance, this does the job. Do I agree with all the rules and all the additional detail that is contained within this book. Not totally, but I can easily see this being a go-to book for those otherwise uninterested in personal finance and saving/investing for retirement. If you have no background, this would be a good introduction. What might I quibble with? Only things that many more personal-finance-aware folks already understand and possibly do differently. For instance, the black and white insistence here to never buy individual stocks would preclude employee purchase plan stock buying and the realization of the discounts that can apply. Might this kind of investing be hurtful? It might. Have many people done well with this kind of investing? Yes, but it's no sure thing. There is also a leaning toward getting professional help with investing which I cringe when I read, thinking back on my impressionable youth and how following this advice would likely have lowered my returns. YMMV. I was pleasantly surprised by the final tip provided by the authors, to lobby for social security. I've only seen a couple of books that acknowledged the role of changing laws and regulations on retirement and government benefits. While one can argue the specifics of the policies and their impact on one's retirement, the regulations and the changes that come about on a regular basis are worth understanding. A slight wording change on a bill relating to, say, IRAs, or Medicare might have a bigger impact on your personal finances than the best investment advice you can buy. Broaden that to include everyone impacted and you can imagine altruistically lobbying for or against some changes. Reasonable big-picture advice.

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Review: Strange Worlds

Strange Worlds by Jonathan Maberry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I listened to the audiobook version of this short story collection, I kept thinking back on variety shows like the old Carol Burnett Show. I was surprised I didn't think of The Twilight Zone. The stories were more appropriate to The Twilight Zone, certainly, with sci-fi and mystery and comedy and fantasy covered. But I think why I thought of The Carol Burnett Show was the extremely good narration of Ray Porter. Porter was able to inhabit the different roles in these very different genres with unique character. Porter did an excellent job as these stories Lyle Waggoner. The stories, in all their variety, were fine entertainment -- not unlike watching a good television show episode. My favorite was the take off of Plan 9 from Outer Space. I also appreciated the author aping the styles of the other stories, especially the John Carter of Mars story. This was quite like what you would read in those original stories, I believe.

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Review: Damascus

Damascus by Lucy Heckman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another of the Thoroughbred Legends series, this one comes from near the end of the series. I found the writing in this one was a little harder to read than some of the others. The author writes a lot of background on Damascus’ ancestry, with more horse names per page than most of these books. I noted quite a few of the pages were dedicated to Damascus’ sire, Sword Dancer – so many that I thought the author had been angling to write Sword Dancer’s entry in this series, but added that content to this Damascus book instead. Compared to the rest of the series, this was much the same, notwithstanding the overwhelming number of horse names – ancestry, progeny, and related. Best read with the Dr. Fager volume, given these contemporary racehorses battled for Horse of the Year for 1967 and 68.

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Review: Rockford & Interurban Railway

Rockford & Interurban Railway by Mike Schafer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have read a number of these Arcadia Publishing books with the sepia tone photographs on the cover that consists of many historic photographs. This one fits the bill. But compared to most, I found the number and the variety of historic photos to be a truly outstanding collection. The authors have found dozens of photos of the interurban of Rockford, as well as it's subsidiary electric trolley, most all from it's very short life, mostly in the first 25 years of the last century. If you want to get an idea of life in Rockford, Freeport, Beloit, and neighboring towns from that time period, this gives you a good background. I have read a number of train books recently, including photograph-heavy books, and this one has by far the largest percentage of photos of smiling conductors wearing spotless uniforms in front of their machinery. The pride shines through. Interesting read, especially if you are interested in the area.

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Review: Napkin Notes: Make Lunch Meaningful, Life Will Follow

Napkin Notes: Make Lunch Meaningful, Life Will Follow by Garth Callaghan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I expected a touching story of how the author wrote notes to his daughter and put them in her lunch for a number of years. The unexpected part was the author's own story of dealing with multiple cancer diagnoses over the years, providing him with an incentive to follow through with his plan to write these notes and to make lunch for his daughter, and to ensure he readied enough notes to cover the daughter for her years through high school graduation. The author tells this story, and the story of the fame that napkin notes brought him, as well as provides some suggestions for writing your own notes for your own loved ones. Nice. I listened to the audio version of this book. The author reads most of it, but the author's daughter reads a few sections as well. She did a fine job, but the parts she read were written by her father referencing himself, and it came across as a bit confusing when you first realize that when she says "I" she means her dad.

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Review: Previews and Premises

Previews and Premises by Alvin Toffler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought I had read all of Alvin (and Heidi) Toffler’s futurist books, but I had missed a few of the less popular ones. I was pleasantly surprised to find this hardback in a library sale, and enjoyed the musky old-book scent and the Kroch’s & Brentano’s price sticker. The book came out the year I started a well-paying job and started buying books at places like Kroch’s, so it was nice to harken back. About the book: Reading it was like revisiting the heady late 70s, where futurists talk about trilateralism, the promise of interactive cable TV, and the false fear of Japanese productivity. Toffler was the only author I read that talked about Marxism, and here it is a constant theme. This is not the typically “authored” book. The book is a culmination of a number of interview questions and answers, and the interviewers seemed very much in the academic/philosophical world, and many of the “questions” asked of Toffler were thinly veiled attempts to shoot down his theories or cause him to say something contradicting something else he said. The games of academics. Toffler has none of it. Good for him. This was mostly just a rehash of “Future Shock” and “The Third Wave” concepts, but told in this q&a manner you might expect from a hosted television talk show. And no surprise, Toffler talks about filming documentaries and giving speeches about his concepts throughout. There is a little bit of personal autobiography that adds to the interesting parts here, but overall, I’d suggest this only for those that want additional background or slightly deeper discussion of his two top books, from around the same time those books came out. Now to get back to my interactive cable TV.

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