Review: A Truck Full of Money: One Man's Quest to Recover from Great Success

A Truck Full of Money: One Man's Quest to Recover from Great Success by Tracy Kidder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read Tracy Kidder’s first big book, “The Soul of a New Machine”, when I was starting college. I soon changed my major to Computer Engineering, the career highlighted in that book about the creation of a new line of computers. To say that book was personally impactful is an understatement. It drove me into work that I enjoyed, and topics that I loved to learn and practice. But instead of computer hardware, the focus of the first book, my career was mostly in software. Now, at the back end of my career, Kidder has released a book about a software engineer, covering the life of Paul English, who worked as a software engineer but converted into a manager, then entrepreneur. English follows the career path that I always envisioned for myself, though I stalled out around step two. It was very enjoyable to see how English grew in his career to become a wealthy business developer and owner, and even beyond that, to invest in charity programs to better people’s lives. Kidder explores English’s various mentors at different phases of his career, illustrating their value to him at the time. He also focuses on English’s team, who follow him from enterprise to enterprise, forming the core cadre of his ongoing series of company startups. The other focus here is on English’s battle with a mental disorder throughout his life. What starts off seeming like it’s going to be something like a Fortune magazine business leader bio article ends up being more than that, not only documenting the growing of tech companies, but also dealing with personal mental issues that impacted English throughout his life.

The question is whether, having read this book, I would have changed my major to software engineering, had I been at the beginning of my career. On reflection, I’d have to say maybe. The earlier book, if I recall correctly, played up the common sense technical know-how of the team, and the team itself. These aspects both appealed to me. In “A Truck Full of Money”, you also see the value and the enjoyment of having a good team. I didn’t get the cleverness of the solutions beyond the software engineering realm, though. This may just have been harder to illustrate, given how much software function is “behind the scenes”. Or it may be simply that times have changed, and tech folks have found different ways to stand out. To me, this was a little less impactful for those reasons. Nevertheless, a very good story, interesting throughout.


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Review: Imperfect: An Improbable Life

Imperfect: An Improbable Life by Jim Abbott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It seems like baseball biographies, and I’ve read quite a few of them, tend to two types. They are about either the superstar telling of their “difficult” journey to greatness, or they are about the characters, usually the bad boys, that grow a small but dedicated legion of fans and who want to tell the “untold, behind the scenes” story of pro ball. This isn’t one of those. This felt like two stories combined. The first, the underlying story throughout the book, is about a kid with a disability who grows up to be a surprisingly good pitcher, in some ways despite the disability, in some ways because of it. This is a story of growth and reflection, one the author does a wonderful job conveying.

The other story here is about an event – the pitching of a no hitter that the author accomplished mid-career. This is told in a series of chapters spread throughout the book told an inning or so per chapter. It felt like a story about being struck by lightning. You get the build-up and the immediate impact, then as the book continues in time past the no-hitter, it is much more reflective. During and right after this rare event, the author, like anyone, feels this could be not just a career highlight but the first of many great things. The author shares that kind of feeling in writing about that no-hitter. But afterwards, as the author talks about his career in baseball in total, he does put that event in perspective as a true career highlight, one that most pitchers will not achieve.

I enjoyed both of these stories combined here by the author. I found “Imperfect”, while not perfect, came pretty close to the kind of thoughtful and personally relatable story that happened to be about a professional baseball pitcher that worked with and around his disability.


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Review: Based on a True Story

Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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Review: Cloud Cuckoo Land

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think what happened is the author read David Mitchel’s “Cloud Atlas” and said to himself “I can run with that.” You get the related tales over time, told in disordered chunks instead building from past to future back to past like “Cloud Atlas”. But you get some sense of relatedness. What I didn’t get was cohesiveness. I remember thinking while reading this that Doerr writes beautiful sentences and paragraphs. But on reflection, a week after finishing the work, I recall very little, including the "whys" within the story. I wasn't bowled over by the relationships between characters that really struck me in "All the Light We Cannot See". Not nearly as memorable as his earlier book.

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