Review: A Grand Tour Of Italy

A Grand Tour Of Italy by Joseph Luzzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not what I was expecting, but better. Instead of focusing on the typical tourist highpoints and landmarks, Luzzi focuses on the Italian character and the history of the grand tour in Italy, talking about historic touring. It’s a very interesting context. I plan on listening to more by Professor Luzzi.

View all my reviews

Review: Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley

Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley by Carolyn Chen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m not a Silicon Valley employee, but I have worked for companies based there, and for software companies who operate in the same general manner. So I recognized the lengths that companies are going through to generate more output from their labor inputs. And one way to do this is to squeeze out those spiritual needs of their employees and manage them as part of their optimization of work time. The book gives examples of this. It seems to me the author couldn’t decide whether this would be a how-to book or more of a scholarly description of the move to push scrubbed Eastern religion to their employees. The writing wavered between these two goals, but I believe the how-to content wasn’t complete enough. It ends up being a reasonable description of the use of watered down Eastern religious practices such as meditation. Interesting, but I didn’t read anything I hadn’t already seen in practice in non-Silicon Valley employers. Scariest concept – HR departments are now studying cults to try to duplicate their ability to attract and maintain members. I will be avoiding any Kool-Aid in company meetings from now on.

View all my reviews

Review: La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West

La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West by Francis Parkman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I come from a small town in Northwestern Illinois and grew up with an interest in history, especially local history. Being from a rural area, we considered anything within an hour or so, also generally rural areas, to be neighbors. Starved Rock, in Utica, I always considered to be close, so I was interested in the history of the area, and had visited many times. I’m also amazed that local history was rarely covered in school growing up. So now, 40 years past high school, I learn that explorer LaSalle visited Starved Rock multiple times as he explored the Midwest, and even built a fort on the rock. LaSalle’s visits to Starved Rock bookend his multiple trips on downstream on the Illinois River on his way to the Mississippi and even to the gulf. Even more interesting is that we learn in this book that the author, Francis Parkman, even visited Starved Rock to determine the location of an Indian village and site of a massacre. So far in Parkman’s history series on England and France in the New World, this is the only mention of the author writing about himself, so it stands out. I find it disappointing that the visit of a famous historian to the area, now over 150 years ago, never made the radar of any of my history teachers in school. Sad.

Stepping off my soapbox, I enjoyed this story of LaSalle’s many explorations of the Midwest and, unfortunate for him, Texas. Parkman provides a surprising level of detail and is able to tell the exploration story that keeps the interest high, even following the remnants of his group of explorers after his death, finding their way back to civilization, not surprisingly through Starved Rock. This was the volume in Parkman’s series that I thought would be most interesting to me, given the local content, and so far I’d say it was. While I enjoy Parkman’s ability to craft a story, his next volume that appears to be all Canadian isn’t calling to me.


View all my reviews

Review: The Candy House: A Novel

The Candy House: A Novel by Jennifer Egan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story concept, where a technological company makes a breakthru that can accomplish things we currently only can dream about, and we follow the impact of this new technology on the company and on society through stories from different people. This reminded me of what used to be sci fi but is now more mainstream speculative fiction. This seemed like “The Circle” to me. The stories are plenty, and I wasn’t able to keep all the characters straight as they and their offspring popped up later on in the book, but that made the book feel highly designed, sturdy. And coming at the new technology from multiple angles really helped to define the arguments for and against that technology’s usage. It also illustrates some of the issues with technology creation and development, the rights of the inventor, and other aspects This leaves plenty of room for thought. Oh, the technology breakthru here is being able to download and to share all experiential memories.

View all my reviews

Review: Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need

Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need by Grant Sabatier
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I find early retirement books tend to be either focused on the how-to or are motivational. Most will try to be both, but they always tend to one or the other, the practical or motivational. This I felt was one of those where the writer thought he was writing a practical book, but it ends up being more of a motivational book. Why? Because so much of the given advice was common knowledge in the industry, or else was very specific to Sabatier’s own history. A couple of things jumped out at me. First, the author, in a definition of bonds, seems to have missed the idea that bonds pay interest. That’s kinda important… Second, you can sense that inflation has changed the calculus on the advice given. This was written assuming status quo, which of course has changed. When you strip out the advice impacted by changes in the environment, and other uncommon things the author accomplished, you are left with a reasonably motivational story about how one guy saved and invested a bunch of money in a short amount of time. And you also get a lot of motivational stories on side hustles, the somewhat necessary icing on the cake of his investment plan. Overall, I liked that this went beyond the traditional advice in these kinds of books, I liked the author’s personal story, and I liked the focus on side hustles. I didn’t like the oversimplifications that would lead the unknowing down the wrong path, the inflation-ignoring advice, and some of the specifics that are not very adoptable beyond the author’s own life. BTW, the author shares that one book that motivated him was “Your Money or Your Life”. I have to agree, with him there, I also found that a life changer.

View all my reviews

Review: Quite a Year for Plums

Quite a Year for Plums by Bailey White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I usually enjoy humorous novels featuring eccentric Southerners. This one had the right parts, but it didn’t feel like it was put together by someone who wanted to tell a story. I could picture each chapter as a vignette on NPR Weekend Edition. They were written well, somewhat interesting, at times humorous, consumable in individual parts. But I found myself referring to the list of characters to try to figure out who was who throughout the book. So many characters sounded alike. And there’s no zany storyline going throughout, but plenty of short ones along the way. White seems a very good article-length writer with an eye on becoming the Tom Bodett of the South, or more likely something more literary. I see a mighty swing and a miss here. Worth the read, but I expect there are better swings than this.

View all my reviews

Review: Under the Sea Wind

Under the Sea Wind by Rachel Carson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Imagine you are at a totally immersive theater, like an IMAX, to watch an underwater nature movie. Now imagine a narrator. Not quite the typical Disney narrator with humorous descriptions of the actions of the sea animals, but one very serious, with plenty of flowery detail, so much detail that you could close your eyes and picture exactly what was on the screen. And imagine, like so many nature documentaries, that the action took place in different chapters, each in a different location focusing on a different animal, even to the extent of naming one fish and following it through its dangerous life. That is exactly what Rachel Carson has done in this book. Reading it, you feel like you just have closed your eyes while watching a nature documentary on animals of the sea. I thought this was a nice accomplishment. However, it was a bit long, and I think I understand why when Disney does these kinds of documentaries they ensure there are some humorous bits - you need that kind of personality in the narration to maintain interest. Given this was written in the early 1940s, it predates those many documentaries that were created since then. Carson certainly had a hand in the way those documentaries were narrated over the subsequent years, so it is interesting in that aspect. The descriptions were memorable.

I listened to this as an audiobook. It was over six and a half hours long. While it was broken into different "chapters" telling stories about different animals, it was still a lot of information covered over a longer time than I was used to for these kinds of narrations. Strangely, the edition I listened to, unabridged, included a full glossary that took almost an hour of that time. This "bonus" inclusion seems to have been unnecessary here.

View all my reviews

Review: A Psalm for the Wild-Built

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the world building, with a kind of Northern California post hippy future, where baristas are important counsellors and government has blocked off sections of the country for nature to heal. And there are sentient and curious robots wandering around that are evolving through recycling. It's a good background and stepping off point for future adventures. The non-traditional pronouns used throughout made it a bit more difficult to read quickly. I suspect that was at least part of the purpose.

View all my reviews