Review: The End of Procrastination: How to Stop Postponing and Live a Fulfilled Life

The End of Procrastination: How to Stop Postponing and Live a Fulfilled Life by Petr Ludwig
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked up this audiobook because it is about a topic I’ve read and thought a lot about, procrastination. I found the contents to be similar to many of the others that I’ve read, although I’d give this one higher marks for tying in research in the area. I found the voice of the author comforting, more like, say Malcolm Gladwell than a self-help book at times. I didn’t find this book as useful as many of the other reviewers. I believe this is because I listened to the audio instead of reading the book. I gather from many other reviews, as well as a perusal of Amazon’s “Look Inside” of this book, that there are many graphic elements in the book, like tables and illustrations, that were not described in the audio, as far as I can remember. While not dealing with those graphics made the audiobook quite short, which is often a good thing, I feel I may have missed out on the best aspect of the book. Good for a self-help book for dealing with procrastination and related mental issues, but probably better in a written format instead of audio.

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Review: A Son at the Front

A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this story of the home front, Paris, in World War I, we are introduced to the son who becomes a soldier, against his parents wishes. Those parents are divorced, the father an artist and the mother remarried to a rich banker. I found the portrayals of the two fathers the most interesting here. Wharton’s artist is a stereotypical artist of the working, non-genius type. He thinks about his work when he shouldn’t be, he wastes a lot of time, and he gets involved in situations to massage his ego. The banker father is played much more broadly. He is shown as caring and capable, though appears bumbling at times. The banker is there to learn from. I found the descriptions of the events in the city during wartime interesting in the kinds of things that went on, and what appears to be the same as normal times – most everything – as well as what is different – the topic of conversations is the war. It reminded me of the way much of what we talk about now in general conversation relates directly to COVID. Not a great book, but I enjoyed the historical aspects.

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Review: Slaying the Badger: LeMond, Hinault and the Greatest Ever Tour de France

Slaying the Badger: LeMond, Hinault and the Greatest Ever Tour de France by Richard Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In this year of adjusted schedules, the long delayed Tour de France didn’t feel the same. Everything felt a bit off, from the crowds to the weather to the weariness of the riders. I have enjoyed watching this sports spectacle since I found how entertaining it could be in the post Lance era. It’s become my summer trip via TV. This is to say that I didn’t follow cycling in the year covered in this book. I’ve heard the names, but that’s about it. Having come at this story fresh, I really enjoyed it. The counterpoint of the always worried young American phenom paired up with the grizzled and unpredictable French veteran was very entertaining. You don’t often see this kind of dynamic. The American can’t trust the French guy, yet at points he must. While you can see how a race like the Tour can be as complex in moves as a chess game, this story added a new dynamic – in addition to the inter-team plotting and scheming, here you see some intra-team strategy. The author goes deep on explaining the events and the backgrounds of the decisions made by the riders. LeMond, the American, is presented sharing his inner thoughts on each day and each tactic in the campaign. For Hinault, you really get a couple of different thoughts on his actions and his reasons – what he was probably thinking, and what he says now – often not the same thing. LeMond comes across as unexperienced, which he was, but with the ability to think things through. Hinault comes across as wily.

The author includes details on other parts of the story, including team management and the tour in general. At times the story becomes a bit too repetitive, as the author approaches race tactics from slightly different viewpoints that come to the same conclusion. I found it a minor slog in the middle of the book that dissipated as the racing stories took over. As others have mentioned, the opening story concerning some gastric distress during the race, is unforgettable, for better or worse…


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Review: Ayn Rand for Beginners

Ayn Rand for Beginners by Andrew Bernstein
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was surprised and disappointed that this book, which I took to be illustrated similar to a graphic novel, was instead illustrated on every other page or so with what I would describe in most cases as clip art. I think the authors missed an opportunity to expand on the verbiage with additional information in the graphics. Otherwise, this was an interesting summary, mostly of Rand’s two biggest novels. Having just watched the movie version of both, I found the descriptions did add to what you could gleam from watching the movies. The book also lays out the basic concepts discussed by Rand in these and other writings. Overall, I found this a quick, though not always easy to read, overview of Rand’s ideas and a summary of her two major novels. Illustrations were unnecessary.

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Review: Quad City International Airport, Illinois

Quad City International Airport, Illinois by David T. Coopman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you grew up within 50 miles of the Quad Cities, attending elementary school in the 60s or 70s, you probably had multiple field trips to the Quad Cities Airport. It was the most visited location through my elementary years, along with Monkey Island in Davenport. It was memorable for two things. One was the tower, which you only rarely got to visit. I remember guys in short sleeve button up white shirts talking about air traffic. But the most memorable part of the airport was the viewing lounge. I remember it had a multi-story wall of windows onto the runways, with ramps and lots of wood. It was a big room, and the glass wall was one of a kind from what I had seen. It must have had an impact on me, as I went to college for aerospace engineering, after watching those big planes land. Or at least you saw them unload – there wasn’t all that many. Nor were they that big in the era of Ozark. This book provides some explanation for why this became one of the bigger draws for field trips. Ends up Moline had a long history as an airfield, and had a knock-down, drag-out battle with Davenport to be the home of the one allowed QC airport by the feds. This book describes that fight, and you can feel the local boosterism that helped build the airport into something you’d want to get your kids used to seeing. This is mostly a book of photos, and my favorites are the ones of that viewing area, which sadly no longer exists.

The book covers the airport from its genesis in the biplane era through various rebuilds in recent years. Of key interest in the book is the description of the local airplane manufacturing companies, including world-renown racing planes by Monocoupe, later bought by local auto manufacturer Velie. These local products brought test pilots and racing pilots to the airport, as well as record breakers. For a while, the record for a woman’s highest altitude flight was from this airport. Quite interesting history that I’d never heard before.

Another interesting story was that a famous race pilot for the Monocoupe company team named Jonathan Livingston often flew out of the airport. Ends up the famous Richard Bach book of the 70s “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” was based in part on this fearless flyer.

In summary, this is a good book for those interested in the history of the QC Airport. Because the airport was also key to the local aviation industry, those with a more general interest in aviation history may also find this of interest to peruse.


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Review: Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead

Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead by Bill Griffith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ultimately a sad story told in a sad manner. Bill Griffith documents the life of Schlitzie, a disabled/mentally challenged man who was in effect sold to the circus by his parents to be a sideshow exhibit. He worked in circuses for decades, and even appeared in films. He became somewhat famous. Griffith describes the many circus performers and operators that worked with Schlitzie over the years, as well as the few forays into life outside of the circus, including a stay at a mental hospital. Schlitzie was somewhat successful in life given his extreme limitations, living to what appeared to be his fullest while also having bad times and bad things happen along the way. What can anyone ask for? His story comes across as sad but enlightening. You get to see a very different perspective on life.

Griffith is not trying to exploit Schiltzie, like the circus folks and the creators of the movie Freaks which included Schlitzie. Griiffith walks a fine line here, describing how Schlitzie is exploited by these people, but also presenting the alternative world where Schlitzie is not exploited for the entertainment of others, but becomes a ward of the state. In fact, this happens to him for a while later in life, and the experience is chilling. Again, Schlitzie appeared to live a good life given his situation and the times.

Schlitzie’s life is about 70% of the contents of this graphic non-fiction book. About 20% delves into the lives and backgrounds of a few other people in Schlitzie’s life - other sideshow entertainers and circus operators. I thought these vignettes added to the story, helping in my understanding of the circus environment during this time period, and illustrating that this was not considered “just a business” by many of those in the industry. And there were certainly strong personalities involved.

The remaining 10% or so was the story of how Bill Griffith heard of Schlitzie and created his cartoon character Zippy the Pinhead based on this sideshow circus entertainer. This part was interesting for me as a Zippy comics fan. I had always wondered about the way Zippy spoke, and it came in part from Schlitzie, as did his looks and even his outfit (Zippy’s clown costume was dress like, based on Schlitzie often being put in a dress and described as a woman). Griffith includes early drawings of Zippy that are identical to his drawings here of Schlitzie, including the 5 o’clock shadow that doesn’t appear in later Zippy comics. While interesting and explaining the basis for Zippy, this also feels a little sad, like Griffith is admitting to profiting on an unfortunate other, and is documenting the original because, well, no one else really is. He’s not asking forgiveness, he’s just telling the story. In the end, I believe that’s all we can hope as a person – that someone remembers our story and finds it worthwhile enough to tell. With Griffith’s help in this substantial book, Schlitzie fares better than most of us.


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Review: Factfulness

Factfulness by Hans Rosling
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was expecting to really like this book, given that I'm interested in the topic of how things are better than we think, and given Rosling's interesting TED Talk videos. But I have mixed feelings here. Rosling does present his data on statistics that most people think incorrectly about in an interesting manner. Rosling begins the book by asking an audience about statistics, things like the poverty rate, education of females throughout the world, and the like. Their responses show a worse than random belief in a worst case view of our world. We are all apparently pessimists. Rosling then goes on to debunk these individual statistics, all the while deriding how people think and get these things wrong, while also telling many, many anecdotes about his life. While I found this somewhat interesting, it also felt very similar to three other books I've read recently. The first was another by Rosling, which was mostly autobiographical. In his "How I Learned to Understand the World", he tells many of the same stories that appear here, including some stories of his being a doctor in Africa as well as the story of how his son helped him learn how to present statistics in a way meaningful to more people. These are generally good stories that lay out why Rosling thinks the way he does, but repetitive to (and generally better told in) his other book.

The other two books I read recently that impacting my thinking on this one were Johan Norberg's "Progress" and Matt Ridley's "The Rational Optimist". Both of these books cover similar ground as Norberg, but go beyond in ways that add value to the argument. Ridley covers pessimism over history as well as media's influence in deepening pessimism. I believe Norberg covered more topics.

What I found most interesting, given I've been reading on world optimism a lot recently, is the backstory of how Rosling and son design a way to present the stories. This is even more interesting if you watch some of Rosling's TED Talk videos. His lesson on storytelling for impact is my key takeaway here.

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Review: Ready Player Two

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I loved the first book by Cline, and was hoping for more of the same. I read this without looking at the reviews, but I finally did peek right before writing this review. I peeked because I was greatly underwhelmed with this story. I think it was because so much of it didn't seem to make sense, and didn't seem to make the most of 80s pop culture in the quests Wade and friends had to deal with. I identified with all the trivial pursuits in the first book, but here either the actions were just odd or the topics were off. I was disappointed with the book, but I presumed it was my own take. I was surprised that there are so many not-so-great reviews, and I was even more surprised that I agree with them. Perhaps this idea only works once.

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