Review: The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Very readable history of the plague, with caveats. The author includes many personal stories from around Europe. The book is divided mostly by country, with descriptions of the advance of the disease over time in each area, along with details of many cities and individuals. This doesn’t read like an academic book. The disease becomes a character, invading new territory, lying in wait in others. Unexpected, but I thought this choice helped the long text. The author does have a problem with the word “however”, however. On audio, the narrator plays along with the word when it first is used, over emphasizing it with pauses before and after. But the narrator, like the listener, soon gets tired of the use of this word, so by the end of the book, the narrator is quickly saying it. It is used here most times unnecessarily, where an “and” would have made more sense. I’d guess “however” appears, unnecessarily, more than 100 times in this book, mostly in the second half. I also noticed some text seemed duplicated within a few paragraphs of where it is introduced. I’m not sure how that happened, but listening to this produced a case of déjà vu. I did learn a lot listening to this book, but perhaps a bit more editing would have made it even better.

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Review: When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pink describes a wide variety of research that relate in some way, directly or tangentially, to timing. You’ll find as you read through this book that pretty much everything that has been researched has a time element – things don’t happen unless time passes. That means the opposite of a book called “When” would be a book called “Is” with a bunch of definitions in it. So, given the wealth of research that could fall into a book with this moniker, Pink finds some entertaining topics, some with interesting research, some with stories that aren’t so well known. This is very much a pop science book, with Pink providing the humorous and knowing consistent voice collecting these writings into a mildly cohesive whole. I have a soft spot for pop science books that are readable, even though the information presented is obviously simplified, and often, like here with the audio version, presented without the backup information you would need to check sources yourself. There were statements made here that just seemed incorrect, more than the recent pop science books I’ve read/listened to. Or perhaps I’m just getting more cynical in what I believe. I did like that Pink broke out after each chapter a description of the research presented and suggestions on how a person could put that research into action in their own life. While much was obvious, it was a kind of tincture of self-help added to the book, providing something extra. Again, the book is a well-written example of pop science, and if you are interested in a relaxing non-fiction read, this is it.

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Review: Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction

Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction by David Norman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d say this is a short overview of the state of dinosaurs, not the “very short introduction” as promised by the series title. But it is good at what it does – describes the full history of dinosaurs as well as the history of dinosaur research, back to the 1800s. Most of the details covered, though, seem to be more recent, including discussion of feathers, the possibilities some dinosaurs were not cold-blooded, and the cause of their disappearance. I greatly enjoyed learning about the current thought in dinosaur research, with the discussion mostly high level but occasionally drilling down to specifics, especially concerning the author’s own research. The ending was a bit of a downer, reminding the reader that humanity is likely to face the same fate as the dinosaurs. Nice read, and it makes me want to read more about dinosaurs and more in this series.

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Review: Calypso

Calypso by David Sedaris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had a drive coming up and needed to pick an audiobook to start. It wasn’t a normal drive, it was driving my daughter back to college. And while normally that’s a two and a half hour drive, there was snow forecast, so I expected a good seven hour round trip, a lot of it in icy conditions. I chose “Calypso”. A big part of that choice was that David Sedaris can tell a story, and that’s what I needed for this long and involved drive. And I thought Calypso had the ring of Caribbean beaches, which would take my mind off of the ice and snow coming down. Ends up I was incorrect – Calypso is the name of a cat mentioned in passing in the middle of the book. Sedaris mixes hilarious stories here with occasional bits of serious remembrances of his deceased mother and sister. I found his mixing of the serious and humorous to be very well conceived. The timing was good. My favorite remarks were about the effect of the use of a Fitbit device on his actions. The Fitbit story is an early one, but it comes back again and again. This audiobook has a mix of audio sources. Most stories are done by Sedaris in studio, but a few are recorded by Sedaris live in concert. I found those live ones with audiences my least favorite, but still funny. His choice of topics delves on the disgusting at times, which weren’t my favorite stories. Overall, though, a very entertaining choice.

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Review: Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery

Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery by Håkan Nesser
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting Scandanavian mystery in that the police are optimistic on solving the case without much of anything to go on, while wasting time, drinking wine and playing chess. In the few Scandanavian mysteries I have previously read, there's much brooding, a dark and dreary environment, and general pessimism until optimism is warranted. This is a change. I found the interactions, especially among the police, to be interesting to read, and I enjoyed the few humorous bits, mostly showing people who are good at their jobs but who are also jaded. The case itself was a bit gory. I look forward to reading more in this series.

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Review: The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace

The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace by C. Richard Weylman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Simple, short book that says you need to meet customer's needs, not trumpet how good you are. This is motherhood and apple pie in terms of the way many people think, but not always in how they approach business. The author gives examples of companies advertising how popular they are, but not advertising how the meet a customer's needs. Whoops. Although this wasn't anything new to me, it was a good reminder of what to focus on when working on marketing and sales, and was well written with many examples.

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Review: Vocal Leadership: 7 Minutes a Day to Communication Mastery, with a Foreword by Roger Goodell

Vocal Leadership: 7 Minutes a Day to Communication Mastery, with a Foreword by Roger Goodell by Arthur Samuel Joseph
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Authors of books that purport to teach the reader something that also happen to offer consulting or training in the same topic have to walk a fine line. They likely make more money on their day-to-day work than on sales of their book, so they often use the book to introduce the concepts but don’t provide an entire package that would allow the reader to fully embrace the topic without paying for additional courses or consulting. I’ve read quite a few books recently that have provided a lot of value in terms of teaching how to accomplish something without requiring hiring the author to help, and I tend to reward those books with better evaluations. Here, this isn’t the case.

The author provides some very basic processes to work on vocal strength. He does this in two ways. First, there are a series of vocal exercises that he describes. This sounds good, but was a very small part of the book. I listened to this book’s audio version, and that likely helped me understand exactly the kinds of vocal sounds that were for practice. Think Eliza Doolittle’s elocution lessons in “My Fair Lady” – most of the exercises were similar. They were also similar to the exercises I learned in Junior High Chorus. Again, this was only a small part of the text. The second way to “embrace your vocal mastery” was to follow a set of rules. You’ve likely heard many of these rules from your parents. Stand up straight. Breathe. Project when you speak. These rules might have some value, but seemed quite generic.

Most of the book, unfortunately, related anecdotes about “vocal mastery”. I enjoyed some of these, including the author’s retelling of the story behind “The King’s Speech”. But many of the anecdotes highlighted the author, and there were enough of these to make the book feel like a long written advertisement for the author’s classes. The classes are mentioned quite often, so you understand that they are the purpose of the book. In fact the structure of the book is such that the rules and exercises content are surrounded, before, after, and in between, with what seems to be advertisement. This isn’t bad in and of itself depending on the actionable content, but here the actionable content felt a bit lacking. The rules seemed too generic, the exercises seemed incomplete. Good for a taste of elocution lessons, but you’ll need to wade through a lot of sales pitch.


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