Review: Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon

Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow, I was not expecting the work that Gladwell accomplished here. He takes a series of discussions with Paul Simon, as well as other musicians, music producers, and friends, and provides a pretty complete book focusing on Paul Simon’s music and writing process. You get the details that fans may not have heard before. But this is really about the creative process. You go deep into the process Simon uses to create music. He talks about it, he plays the parts of songs that influenced his songs. When there’s a question about how some songs sounded the way they did, Gladwell brings in the sound engineer to describe the echo chamber used 50 years ago. There is so much more here on audio than you could get on paper. It is much more of an experience than just a read.

I was reading another book the same week when I was listening to this. I was reading “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell. This book was also created by stringing together snippets from interviews. But I felt the Campbell book was very disjointed, jumping topics from paragraph to paragraph, only loosely following the organization set out by chapter headings. I noticed Gladwell’s hand at moving some stories out of chronological sequence to further discussion on a topic, and even repeating some snippets. But all toward a more cohesive whole. Gladwell shows his mastery of production here. My next step may well be to compare the video of Campbell’s interviews, or better, more modern documentaries.


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Review: Interior Chinatown

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I chose to join a college alumni book club in reading this book, but I listened to the audiobook version instead of reading. I’m not sure that was a good choice. The issue is that this book is written, from what I gather from other reviews, in the format of a screenplay. When listening, you don’t get all the context you would get with a visual page in the format of a screenplay, so it is more difficult to follow the action. To me, the story seemed more to blend screenplay and narrative, sometimes making each part easy to define, and other times moving from one into the other without warning. You could be in a long narrative then end up hearing stage instructions. The audio does use different voices for the different characters, so there is some context, but it’s not always what you originally think. This kind of organization was confusing, but it also was interesting. It reminded me of some movies that changed the focus from personal story to background story – I kept thinking of “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” for some reason.

Most book reviews describe how on the face the book is about how Asian actors are pigeonholed into roles, and there are a hierarchy of roles leading to the top, Kung Fu Man. As the protagonist goes through his career he notices other roles that he is pigeonholed into, even beyond acting. An interesting take on self-imposed and societal stereotypes that apply to us all. Weird, but fun to read.


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Review: The Power of Myth

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was not at all what I was expecting. I’ve had a very good college mythology class, and was expecting something akin to that. This felt more like an Eckhart Tolle book, with a writer full of himself and willing to come up with new terms to provide an academic-sounding answer to every question and to overcome any objections. And Campbell isn’t really the writer of this. This is a choppy edit of the transcript of Bill Moyers talking to Campbell for their PBS show. The narration is presented with often long monologues by one or the other on a topic. This would be fine, but the next exchange could be on an entirely unrelated topic. I found it difficult to follow and to tie the ping-pong discussion to the main concepts of the chapters. It feels like this was rushed to press to capitalize on the popularity of the TV show.

Another indication of the book being not quite there was the highlighting in my used copy. It had obviously been used as a textbook and had some highlighting. But there were so few passages highlighted, and with no semblance of importance to the chosen passages, that I would have to say the former owner didn’t know what to make of this either.

I am very surprised at my reaction to this book. I’ve heard about it for many years and was looking forward to finally spending time reading it. It just didn’t seem right. I would hope that Campbell’s books that aren’t edited together questions and answers would be more interesting. Skip this book. Perhaps the PBS shows are a better bet, and perhaps the shows are what people are thinking of when they rate this highly.


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Review: Hello, Habits: A Minimalist's Guide to a Better Life

Hello, Habits: A Minimalist's Guide to a Better Life by Fumio Sasaki
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve read quite a few books on habits over the past few years. It seems this is a cottage industry for non-fiction writers that want to write more. This was another. In total, it seemed much like the others that I’ve read. There are many personal stories from the writer and there are some suggestions as to how to build or break habits. This had a different, more personal voice than I’ve seen in other books though. It seems the author kept a diary and used this book as a way to reflect on his life and the habits that have impacted him. He even shares his bad habit of drinking too much and his efforts to successfully eliminate this habit. He also talks about food and exercise, especially running, quite a bit – no surprise. But he also talks at the end of the book about habits of kindness, which was a nice way to end his musings. You get a lot of the personal in the beginning and the ending, which I found the most interesting parts of the book. The bulk of the book is going through a couple of long lists relating to making habits and the values of habits. Here he mixed personal observations with research and quotes. I was surprised that many of the quotes were from William James, famed psychology writer before Freud, and Haruki Murakami, famous writer. The James quotes implied to me that Sasaki started his research on the topic with the basics, and maybe focused on them for the scientific aspects of his book. Or maybe James quotes come up often when Googling habits… The Murakami quotes and mentions show the personal research the author is relating, as Murakami is also a runner who book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” is in a similar vein.

Overall, nothing really mind-bending, but it is a mostly comfortable read. I listened to the audio version of this book, which was slowly read, with long breaks between thoughts that worked well for allowing something to sink in, even at 2x speed. I am rarely happy with long lists in an audiobook, and this one has two long lists. They were too long to really keep track of, but in this case the items, 50 in the longest list, were more like short chapters where the topics merged into other chapters. The organization wasn’t something that you needed to rely on to understand the point of the book. So that worked OK here, which was good because the points all ran together when listening.

I forgot to carp on this in the first version of the review:
I should also mention a pet peeve that occurred with this audiobook. I greatly enjoy when the places I live in or grew up in show up in books. I'm from a small town and live in a small suburb. I think this background makes me more interested in familiar locations showing up in books. It helps me feel a comradery with the author. So this book mentions the neighboring suburb, Naperville, as a place where some research took place. Naperville is pronounced with a long a, but the narrator pronounced it with a short a, like taking a nap. I've made this point before, but I know producing an audiobook is an expensive proposition for a publisher, and there often aren't more than a handful of proper names in a non-fiction book (that goes for this one). Why can't they get the pronunciations correct? This was the second audiobook in a row that mentioned one of my cities, and flubbed the name.

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Review: Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less

Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less by Michael Hyatt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s another book on how to focus to be productive. This is like most that I’ve read. Nothing much jumped out at me compared to the many others that I’ve read. One thing, though. This was written seemingly aimed at managers – people who have the ability to delegate their work to underlings. I notice other reviews pointing this out as a bad thing – it doesn’t mean much unless you can delegate. However, I disagree with that. As a career underling, I found it quite interesting to see how my manager could become more productive were they to use Hyatt’s common ideas. For example, one thing that Hyatt does is to suggest a delineation of delegated job duties and responsibilities, from a request to do research, to a request for research and opinion, to a complete outsourcing of a task or a full responsibility for a project or a process. (There are a few other levels in between those in the book.) I liked how Hyatt created this hierarchy of delegation, and now I know that when my boss delegates something to me in a vague way (which is the usual way in my experience), I must ask for details and specifics of the request along the lines that Hyatt mentions here.

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Review: Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D

Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D by David Kushner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read a book on D&D a few years ago, “Of Mice and Men”. That book focused on the gameplay of D&D and changes over time, the D&D “industry”, with fan conventions and collectibles, and the history of the business. I enjoyed that book quite a bit, but I tend to like business books. Here, in the “Rise of the Dungeon Master”, we get more a focus on the history of the game itself. This comes at D&D at a different angle than “Of Mice and Men”. This focuses on more of the creation of the game. I enjoyed playing D&D when I was younger, back in it’s early years, but I also enjoyed war games. The similarities are in the rules. Often wargames had complex rulebooks, and to play you often ended up arguing like junior lawyers. D&D had a similar complex rulebook, but it was more of a set of governing rules, incomplete given how the game can be played. But D&D also introduced the Dungeon Master, who was the judge and jury. Kushner gives some of this flavor to the description of the beginnings of D&D. Overall, Kushner tells a satisfying story of D&D, with a focus at the beginning and the ending on Gary Gygax. You don’t get the level of detail you would get out of a longer book, but, as with a good dungeon master, you get a story.

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Review: The Legacy Journey: A Radical View of Biblical Wealth and Generosity

The Legacy Journey: A Radical View of Biblical Wealth and Generosity by Dave Ramsey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you find yourself at some point in life having some success in making money, through earnings, investment, skill or luck or perseverance, but feel that biblical teachings put monetary wealth in a bad light, this is the book for you. Ramsey dives in to those specific biblical passages that appear on the surface to be dissing the rich and provides an alternative interpretation. There are a handful of passages that get a detailed review, especially describing the historical situation that influenced the wording and reading the surrounding passages for context. Context is the big “eye-opener” here. You can easily understand where he’s coming from. One of the messages that comes out of this book is that according to Ramsey’s reading, God wants you to enjoy the fruits of your labors. And tithing is a given. I read this because I thought it was a general book on the mindset of planning investments for the distant future for heirs and for charity. It’s not that - the key word in the title ends up being "biblical". But I must admit that the message was a nice change from the self-loathing that much of society and the media has been heaping on people.

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Review: Break In

Break In by Dick Francis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another Dick Francis mystery, and another Dick Francis hero. Here, our hero is a steeplechase jockey who figures out a crime against his sister and her husband, negotiating with base criminal henchman and the wealthy and connected people that employ them. As is usual, the hero faces some major physical inducements to stop his involvement, but unlike most of Francis’ heroes this stopped short of torture and/or a necessary hospital stay. Well, except for stiches. Also unlike other Francis books that I’ve read, there seems to be little in the way of a heavily researched side topic in the mystery. The closest we get to coming afield of horse racing is the description of a telephone bug, circa 1970s. Despite missing these hallmarks, I found that I enjoyed the story. There was even a touch of romance here. I am not surprised that Fielding makes his way to an additional Francis story, as he was the most likeable of the ones I’ve read so far. I read the follow on, “Bolt”, a while ago and didn’t rate it highly. I suspect had I read them in order I’d have rated “Bolt” a bit higher.

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Review: All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business

All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business by Mel Brooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What are the most likely stories I would expect from a Mel Brooks autobiography? I would expect stories about his acting in movies and his comedy albums. I would expect some stories about making his movies, and background on the funny and memorable bits. And I’d expect some personal stuff. Ends up I mostly misjudged Brooks. He spends much of the first half of his book talking about his childhood and his efforts before achieving fame in the movies. This I found the most entertaining parts of the book. The second half of the book focused on his movies and his life with his wife. A surprising (to me) focus of many of his stories was the business aspects and the work aspects of directing and producing his films. I was expecting a thoroughly gossipy story but instead got the hard-working producer describing some of his biggest problems and how he solved them. I was also expecting all comedy, but Brooks describes his well-rounded portfolio of films of all types. I found his stories interesting from a business perspective, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. His background on his comedy films was quite interesting. I especially enjoyed his involvement with the incomparable Alfred Hitchcock while filming “High Anxiety”. If you’re looking for stories about his comedies, this has it. If you are looking for more traditional stories about childhood and early career struggles, this has it. If you want to know about the problems of a studio head, here you go. Brooks covers it all.

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Review: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I graduated from college and started my first full time job, I celebrated by buying a book. No surprise. I chose one that was new, at the time, and intellectual, and related to my job choosing technologies for business optimization and general use. My choice of three decades ago – Zuboff’s first book “In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power”. It was interesting to me, but nothing very surprising. Zuboff wrote with a professor’s eye to detail, making more arguments than I normally see to make her cases. I found her style of writing started with the bones of a popular book but added academic detail uncommon in books I normally read.

Fast forward to the end of my career, and I see Zuboff has released another large tome. Here, I had the benefit of the audio version as well as the hardback to refer to. Her style remains similar to her earlier book – develop some arguments and provide extensive evidence and examples to make her points. I don’t recall if her first book was written to sound an alarm on automation, but this one absolutely is written to sound alarms, this time against technology companies abuse of privacy rights. Zuboff dives into the recent history of technology companies using more and more personal data to shift power from citizens to the companies. Main boogeyman here is Google, but after developing her story with Google, she adds similar stories of corporate overreach from Microsoft, Facebook and others. While I recall her first book reading more as If aimed at technologists to persuade them to fix their own problems, this one seems more aimed at prompting a political response. The outlook here is dire, and I didn’t get a lot of hopeful solutions from the reading. For a deep take on the issues of companies using personal and behavioral data on a massive scale to modify the way people think and act, this is an excellent start. And there’s a massive footnote section!


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